


The Weight of Snow

by eloquated



Series: The Weight of Snow [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Eventual Happy Ending, Gen, M/M, Only main ship tagged, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:21:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 39,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26932789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eloquated/pseuds/eloquated
Summary: It doesn't happen overnight.  It's the slow filtering of his story through a camera lens, until Victor doesn't recognize the man they're talking about anymore.It's the cost of being a living legend: they turn your life into fiction.The truth doesn't look as good in glossy print.  But it's much more real.
Relationships: Victor Nikiforov & Georgi Popovich, Victor Nikiforov & Yuri Plisetsky, Victor Nikiforov/Yuri Plisetsky
Series: The Weight of Snow [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2020247
Comments: 139
Kudos: 251





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are places in Russia that almost never show up on maps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiya! This is my first time pushing out the boat for this ship, which I've completely fallen in love with. It's a bit of a slow burn to get there, but I hope you all enjoy the ride!
> 
> Also, I'm terrible at tagging things, so if you think I've forgotten an important one, just leave me a note and I'll see to fixing it!
> 
> You can see the cover art at : https://tinyurl.com/y6jq48k5

**[ one . ]**

There are places in Russia that almost never show up on maps. Places that the rest of the world has decided are too cold, too north, too small to be of any importance. Where the sun only skims the horizon during the summer, hovering at the margins and turning the sky a pale, twilight white. And where the winter nights are endless, with a cold that burrows through clothes, and bites at exposed skin.

Victor is four, and thinks it must be very hard to find the ice. 

Kostya has a broom over his shoulder like a sentry's rifle, and his mittens are falling from the pockets of his parka. The sleeves are too long, just like Victor's, because it has to last more than a year. He knows the other boys are going to the outdoor rink to play hockey, but only Ivan from down the road has a proper stick. The other boys play with their mother's brooms and the ends of the shovels they use to clear the snow from the ice.

Kostya comes home with frostbite on his cheeks, and he burrows his cold fingers down the back of their sister's collar to make her shriek.

When Victor's mother finally decides he's old enough to go with him, his skates are hand-me-down. They used to be his sister Irina's, and they have picks at the front that catch on the ice when he tries to push himself across the uneven surface. 

They're too big, the toes stuffed with crinkling pages from _Izvestia_ and _Nezavisimaya Gazeta_ , the newsprint rubbing off on his damp socks. 

This is the first place Victor learns to love the ice. It's bumpy and cold, and there are places at the edges where the rushes and reeds still peek through the surface. He isn't big enough to play hockey with Kostya and his friends, but they're nice enough to clear off a small space in one corner for him.

He teaches himself to skate while they play. And Kostya comes over between goals to laugh at his brother's wobbling, and he shows him how to push off with one skate angled, the edge biting down and gripping the ice. 

It doesn't hurt when he falls, not really. His mother had wrapped him in layers before he left home; with thermal underwear under his jeans, and snow pants, and the long hem of his parka hanging around his knees. He has two pairs of wool socks that itch, and the flaps of his hat pulled down low over his ears. 

All of it used to be Kostya's, but he's long since outgrown it. 

Kostya is twelve, and part of Victor wants to be like him when he's older. It feels like he knows everything; not like their parents who think of the way the world used to be. It's changing, and Kostya and Irina explain things to Victor when he's confused.

At four, Victor doesn't care when it starts to get dark, or that his fingers are numb where he's balled them into his mittens. He's getting better already, and he doesn't fall nearly as much as he did after lunch. But Kostya takes his arm anyway, and they both wave goodbye to the other boys.

"Vitya! Come on, Mama is going to kill us if we're late for dinner, and your face is all red."

"Da, da! But did you see me? Did you see me not falling?" Victor's feet feel strange when he stuffs them back into his boots, toes half frozen and prickling when he tries to move them. He sits on the snow drift for another moment, fighting with his laces until Kostya knees down to help him.

In this part of the world, it gets dark early in the winter; but Kostya's hand is tight around Victor's as he leads the way back home. And Victor tells him everything he learned, even though Kostya was right there and could see it with his own two eyes. 

"I saw! You're getting a lot better. Even if you're wearing girl's skates." Kostya laughs, and Victor holds up one of the skates slung across his shoulder to get a better look. It's hard to see in the dark, but he can make out the sharp little picks at the toes, and the way the blade tails out at the end. Kostya's skates are smooth at both ends.

Victor doesn't tell him that he doesn't care if they're girl's skates, or boy's skates-- he just wants to be on the ice.

**...**

Victor is five, and his sister, Irina is only eleven, but she's old enough to take him to the rink every day after school.

He doesn't skate on the pond outside anymore, he hasn't for months. Not since his school class came to the rink for a lesson, and Victor managed to impress the man who ran the building. He has lessons now, with five little girls that come to practice with fancy skating clothes, and talk about the ballet lessons they've been taking on the weekends.

It doesn't matter than he's the only boy in the class, or that the hockey players that use the ice space afterwards give him dark, sidelong looks. Victor doesn't really understand why they don't like him, but Irina tells him not to pay them any mind, so he doesn't.

He doesn't tell Kostya either, because his brother has a temper, but there's only one of him. Victor thinks the world of his brother, but he's also sure he couldn't fight a whole hockey team. Even if he did try.

Victor is learning to stop, and to gain speed. The snowplow stops Kostya showed him the year before are being replaced by t-stops, skate angled forty-five degrees. He doesn't know the math, but it's becoming muscle memory, and his teacher watches him closely as he learns to shift his balance to skate backwards, and catches his picks to bunny hop across the ice.

Some of the best figure skaters in history have been Russian. Men and women both. And it's their footsteps that Victor is trying to slot his small feet into. Their strides that are still too long.

But he's growing. He's getting better. 

And they can glare all they want, because he's going to be the best one day, he can feel it in his bones.

Of course, sometimes he's just feeling cold! The air in the rink is dry and it crackles when he moves, static building in the arms of his wool sweaters. It chaps his fingers, and dries his lips, but Victor doesn't notice any of that. 

He's too busy imagining his future. He's going to skate for Russia, and he's going to show everyone-- not just the people in his village, but the whole world, what he can do. Applause runs in his mind on a loop, and it pushes him harder.

Irina carries a thermos with her to the rink every day, and she sits by the ice, doing her homework on the bleachers. Sometimes Victor sneaks over to the boards and steals sips of her tea, even if it's too black and strong for his taste.

But it's hot, and he can feel it settling in his belly. IIrina fusses with his hat, because that was Kostya's once, too, and Victor is much smaller than his brother.

"They're going to do a show at the end of the year, and we all get to be in it!" Victor tells her excitedly, bouncing on the edges of his blades. 

Irina laughs, and fixes his hat again, before it can slide back into his eyes. "We'll tell Mama when we get home. Maybe Mrs. Semenova would watch Lyosha so she can come see."

His brother is just a baby, a newborn, and Victor doesn't know much about babies. But Lyosha cries a lot, and that would be distracting in the middle of the show. His mother wouldn't be able to pay attention to his skating if Lyosha was there.

He loves his little brother, but Irina is right-- he should stay with the sitter, and he can watch Victor skate another time. This is just the first, he's sure of it.

Inside his mittens, Victor crosses all his fingers, because he hopes. He wants his parents to see how good he is, and how hard he's worked-- and it's just not the same when he's marking out steps in the middle of the kitchen floor.

Victor is five the first time he stands in front of an audience, and he knows this is where he belongs.

**[ two . ]**

Victor is six, and the television set in the living room crackles sometimes, drowning out the sound of the announcer's voices. He doesn't understand them when they speak English, and the subtitles at the bottom of the screen flash by too quickly for him to read. Sometimes they play the Russian announcer's voices over the English ones, and Victor feels like they're speaking right to him. 

He's learning, but he still has to ask Irina to explain some of the long, complicated words for him.

Her English is much better than his, she's learning it in school.

"What's a chor-ee-oh-gra-phee?" Victor asks from the rug in front of the television. He's been sitting here all afternoon because it's too cold to go outside, and one of their five channels is showing the figure skating Grand Prix. It's being held in Moscow this year, and he bounces with excitement whenever they play the Russian national anthem. 

He's too young to understand the tight, proud feeling in his chest, but his mother just smiles indulgently. If she knows why his eyes prickle with tears, she isn't saying.

" _Khoreografiya_." Irina translates after a long moment, running the word back and forth across her tongue, "I think. It's how they plan what they're going to do on the ice."

Victor nods, his eyes never leaving the screen. One day, he promised himself, he'd speak English well enough to know all the words they're saying. He'll need them when he's performing for thousands of people, and reporters want to ask him questions. And he'll need them for talking to his fans, of course. 

One day, he's going to be the best skater in the world, because nobody loves it as much as he does. 

His father says he's obsessed, but Victor doesn't care. Skating is the thing that makes him the most happy, he'd never leave if he didn't have to.

"Irina! Irina! Look!"

In half a heartbeat, Victor had forgotten about being famous. He's wide eyed as he stares, and on the flickering, snowy screen he can make out the young man in the sparkling green costume. 

This is what he's been waiting all day for.

"You like that one, Vitya?" Irina laughed, only half paying attention to what her little brother is doing, "What's his name?"

Victor wriggles back on the rug until he can lean against the front of the couch, his knees drawn up tight to his chest. He's practically vibrating with excitement as the music starts, loud and energetic; and Victor hums gibberish along to the English lyrics he can't understand. 

> _Robbie Miralles, the American senior gold medalist is set to skate next, to Lady Gaga's 'Bad Romance'._
> 
> _It's hard to believe he's only eighteen._
> 
> _It looks like he's gearing up for his best year to date, just listen to the fans in the audience! They've come all the way from America, and they can't take their eyes off him._

Robbie Miralles has darker skin than anyone Victor has ever seen, and under the arena lights the sparkly things in his black curls glitter. He looks like he belongs there, Victor thinks with his chin propped on his knees. He looks like he's been made to glide effortlessly across the ice. 

The announcer's voices fade into the background as Victor watches. And maybe he is obsessed, because he knows the names of all the jumps, and the spins, his toes tapping at the threadbare rug.

And that night, he dances around the kitchen as he sets the table, jumping over the cracks and lines in the linoleum, mimicking Robbie's routine. 

Victor knows he's years away from being that good, but it doesn't matter. He'll get there, no matter how hard he has to work.

It's just a matter of time, and will. 

But mostly, it's because Victor loves it too much to ever stop.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victor has real talent, you should consider sending him to the summer training camp. If he's going to pursue skating professionally, this is the best place for him. If he can impress Yakov Feltsman, it could make his career.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick thanks to everyone who took a moment to comment or kudos the first chapter, it really means the world to me!
> 
> I have the first draft of this whole fic written, so I'm going to be updating weekly on Friday or Saturday, so watch this space for more victurio goodness!

**[ three . ]**

Victor is ten, and the train to St. Petersburg seems to drag on forever. 

He's never left his small town before; and before they'd even reached the city, his face is plastered to the window, watching the scenery fly by. The passenger car smells of cigarette smoke and the stale dregs of his father's coffee at the bottom of the paper cup-- it's a combination that will sit in his memory for the rest of his life, thick with anxiety and nauseous excitement.

He's leaving Siberia, and the world seems suddenly larger, even with his father's warm, rough hand on his shoulder. He's going to be a figure skater, he's going to train under the best coach in Russia, and this is the life he's been dreaming of since he was five.

Now that it's here, it's scarier than he thought it would be.

St. Petersburg is beautiful, with buildings higher than Victor has ever seen, and so many people he feels lost before they've left the train station. 

Home has always been low and square, utilitarian buildings left over in the old Soviet style. Deep set windows and roofs peaked just enough to let the snow slide off. Everything had been squat and grey, and Victor has never imagined that anywhere else could be different.

He's seen pictures of St. Petersburg, but they were black and white, and fuzzy. This is different, it's living colour, and everything is beautiful, and strange.

In the space of a few hours, the landscape of his life has given way to elegant spires and brightly coloured domes that looked like onions to Victor. In St. Petersburg in the spring, the concrete and snow are divided by the sun glittering on the bright rivers that criss-cross the city. Eyes wide, Victor drinks it all in; spying the blue of the Baltic Sea between the buildings, and hearing the cries of the sea birds cawing over the rattle of the train.

He is small here, a little boy on the edge of something much too big, grasping his father's hand as he waves down a grimy black taxi. They've left the family car with his mother, because little Lyosha gets tired when they have to walk to the store; and the baby, Tatiana, is too heavy for his mother to carry with the groceries.

Victor has seen pictures of the ice rink on the brochure form, the glossy images half hidden beneath the grubby post-it note from his coach... 

Former coach... 

The man who had taught him to stop on the ice, his skates frosted in fine, snowy shavings. Who'd made sure Victor could have lessons, even when his parents hadn't been able to afford them. And who had taught Victor everything he'd been able to.

_ Victor has real talent, you should consider sending him to the summer training camp. If he's going to pursue skating professionally, this is the best place for him. If he can impress Yakov Feltsman, it could make Victor's career. _

Standing outside the arena, Victor clutches his father's hand tighter, and tilts his head back as far as he can, just to see the full spread of the marquis sign above them. "Sportivnyy... Sportivnyy Klub Chempionov." His mouth moves around the long string of letters, trying to smile down the sharp edges of his anxiety.

Staying here is an act of will, because part of him is scared to death.

For the next three weeks, this will be home. 

For the next three weeks, Victor knows he has to prove he's good enough to stay. Children from all over Russia-- and beyond-- come to train under Yakov Feltsman. He is the best, and when Victor's eyes fall on the arena for the first time? He knows this is where he wants to be.

Silently he crosses his fingers inside his mittens. 

_ I'm not scared, I'm not scared, I'm not scared. _

"Papa..." Victor's voice wavered, throat moving as he swallows hard on the sickly, sour taste in his mouth. For a brief, wild moment, he wishes desperately that he could go back home with his father. Back to the stuffy train, and away from all this terrifying space.

"Are you going to miss me?" He asks instead.

His father's face is still, seconds ticking by, but his arms are steady and steel hard as he gathers Victor into his chest, one calloused hand curled against the back of his son's silver-blonde head. "I will." He promises roughly, "But you'll make us proud, Vityusha. I know you will."

It would be the last time his father would ever call him by that name. 

Years later, Victor would wish he could remember just how it had sounded.

**...**

All the other boys are so tall. 

Victor is a Christmas baby, born at the end of the year, and he's never been big for his age. The others are eleven, twelve, thirteen; taller and broader through the shoulders, displaying their arm muscles by rolling back the sleeves of their t-shirts. They lean against the barre in the ballet studio, and Victor has the sudden, intense feeling that he's going to be sick, right there on the polished wooden floor.

He's stick thin in his leggings, with knobbly knees and sharp elbows, his feet turned out in his best imitation of first position. 

There are fifteen of them. And only two will be allowed to stay at the end of the camp. 

"Don't look at them, they're not half as good as you are. The only person you have to impress is Mr. Feltsman."

And there's Georgi Popovich. 

He's Victor's age, a day younger. He watches his feet when they dance, because he's been doing jazz and gymnastics all his life, but the artful forms and precision of ballet seem to escape him. 

Georgi, with his mussed black hair and laughing blue eyes. Victor had thought he would be trouble; they're so close in age and build, and fighting for the same place in the class. Competition.

But they're also both ten, and away from home. Both awkward and teetering on the edge of adolescence. And Georgi doesn't mind if Victor grabs his hand when he's scared. They're both clammy and nervous, and Victor suspects that Georgi might need the reassurance just as much as he does.

Victor's never had a friend like Georgi. 

**...**

The ice in St. Petersburg smells the same as the ice in Siberia, when Victor and Georgi sneak away from the rest of their class at the end of the third day. It's a sharp, cold smell that lingers at the back of Victor's nose; and if he closes his eyes, he's sure he could imagine being back home.

They know they're not supposed to be here without Yakov, but the door had been left ajar, and the temptation was too great to resist. It's late, and most of the other students-- the accepted ones, the ones working on their programs for the coming year, the ones who belong here because this is their rink-- have left for the day.

Georgi's hand is nervous and cold when he reaches up to pull Victor down beside him, the two of them crouched between the seats. It's uncomfortable, knees folded up to their chests and heads bowed to peek between the rows. But it's worth it-- it will always be worth it-- to see the older skaters practicing. 

There are two people left on the ice, and Victor has never seen people skating like this in person before. 

"That's Viktor Kuzmin." Georgi whispers in his ear, wide eyed as the older boy picks up speed. He's flying across the ice, fast as the hockey players Victor watched at home. And for one breathless moment, he watches as Viktor catches his toe picks and launches himself into the air.

His red hoodie is a bright, bold streak; blurring as Viktor spins from one jump to another. 

"He's strong." Victor whispers back, huddling deeper into the grimy gap between one row of seats and the next. "I want to be like that."

But if Viktor Kuzmin was the lightning, then the man who pushed off the boards a moment later was the thunder, all power without the flash. He's a head shorter, mouse brown, and Victor doesn't so much watch, as stare. Jaw slack and eyes wide, because this man _ skates like him. _

His sweater is pale purple, and it slides off his shoulder as he weaves out to centre ice in a step sequence that Victor wants to commit to memory. He wants to try it the next time he's on the ice. 

The man is grace in motion, flowing into footwork that leaves Victor holding his breath, because this is storytelling without words.

This is beauty. 

And this how Victor wants to skate.

Hidden in the seats, Victor feels the tears prickling at the corners of his eyes, and he doesn't know why. There's no brute power in the skater; he moves like... 

_ Love _ . 

Like he can't imagine anywhere more perfect than at that moment.

That's how Victor feels on the ice, when everything is coming together.

"That's Sasha Dmitriev," Georgi whispers in his ear, "He was just signed to the Russian National team last year."

Victor is ten, and wipes his eyes on the back of his sleeve. He'll do anything to learn to skate like that.

**...**

Sometimes Victor isn't sure he wants to be here.

It isn't the skating -- Yakov is angry and demanding, but Victor can feel himself getting better every day. In two months he's become the strong, stronger, strongest version of himself, and everything seems to make more sense when he's on the ice.

He'll put up with anything to stay, but that doesn't mean it's easy.

The other Viktor is loud, his voice reverberating around the hollow rink, and it echoes from the high roof. He has no interest in the new students, the young ones that are still learning to land their jumps without wobbling. Without catching their picks and tumbling into the ice. 

He's the loudest person in the rink, made of jabbing elbows and clipped words, and he reminds Victor more of a hockey player than figure skater. 

Right until the moment he uses his strength to leap into the air, every muscle tensed and perfect. Nobody jumps like him.

Viktor Kuzmin treats the ice like something to be conquered. 

"There's more than one way to be a great skater, Vitya. Don't let him get under your skin, the only reason he looks so talented is because he only does what he already knows."

Sasha, Victor has learned, is all the things the other Viktor is not. 

"What do you mean?" Victor loves the way Sasha always rests his hand on his shoulder when they're talking; it feels like a lifeline, warm through the fabric of his jacket. Today is no exception, and Victor leans into the touch, catching the chipped purple polish on Sasha's fingers from the corner of his eye.

Yakov won't like that, he knows. 

The Federation has  _ expectations _ , and that has always extended to how they look. As long as the FFKK is supporting them, he's learned, they'll behave.

Victor knows Sasha will take the polish off before competition. What he doesn't understand is why the thought of it prickles uncomfortably in the space behind his ribs. He doesn't see how a little colour could be wrong. Unacceptable.

Dangerous.

He thinks Sasha is beautiful.

But then, he is Lilia Baranovskaya's prized student, and maybe that means he has to be? Victor's heard her arguing with Yakov about Sasha when she comes to the rink.

Lilia thinks he has a future in dance.

Yakov thinks he should keep skating. There's more money in that, and he doesn't want to lose one of his champions.

Currently, Victor thinks, Yakov is winning.

"A great skater can remake themselves as many times as they need to. They need to be able to embody the role they're performing. But Viktor will always be Viktor; he doesn't know how to become anything else." Sasha's hand is still on his shoulder, still offering the lifeline, and Victor feels braver with him there.

He can learn to ignore Viktor, because this is where he's supposed to be, and he's not going to let anyone scare him away. No matter how big and angry they are.

It's cold in the rink, and from the boards, Victor can see the small drifts of snow kicked up by the other Viktor's skates when he slides to a stop. "I don't think he wants to be anyone else. He wants everyone to see him, and only him."

For an instant, Sasha breathes a laugh; a thin sound that lingers uncomfortably in the back of Victor's mind. Victor's never been very good at reading people, but he knows it isn't a happy laugh.

"Maybe you're right... Come, show me that combination you're working on, I'll spot you."

Sasha always has time for him-- for all the younger skaters-- but this feels like changing the subject. And Victor has to wonder just how badly Sasha wishes he could transform himself into something else. 

Victor is ten, and living in the dorms in St. Petersburg. His bed is on the left, and Georgi's is on the right, and sometimes they keep each other up too late. It feels like having family again, though he never says it, because that's too sentimental for either of them.

They're young, getting better every day; and Victor knows they're going to go to the Olympics together one day. He knows it because he's going to go, and they always do everything together. 

Sasha Dmitriev is only eighteen, but he feels much older. He's one of the best in the world, with the gold medals to show for it; and Victor doesn't really understand why he always looks so sad. 

**[ four . ]**

Victor is twelve, and his hair falls into his eyes when he skates.

He won't cut it, not even when Yakov glares at him, and threatens to take scissors to it in his sleep. It's  _ his hair _ , and he's going to wear it however he wants.

Of course, Victor is twelve, and not sure how he wants to look. Not like this.

Not the uneven edges and the shaggy pieces that fall into his face. Because this isn't beautiful, it's awkward, and Victor knows he has to wait through it. It will get longer, he just has to be patient. He's heard enough of the girls at the rink complaining about 'growing out' bad haircuts, and he assumes that's what he has to do, too.

Just wait. Be patient. And he pushes it out of his face for the dozenth time in the last five minutes. It's just long enough to shove behind his ears, and to hope for the best.

"Lilia is actually going to murder you if you show up to ballet looking like that, again." Georgi says without missing a beat, his skates kicking up a thin puff of snow as he slides to a stop. Georgi doesn't know the first thing about having long hair, either-- but he doesn't want it, so he keeps it short.

Sensible.

Out of the way.

Victor grins and tugs a few errant strands of silver-grey into his face deliberately, "She threatened to make me wear a bald cap if I didn't learn to tie it back." He admitted, pushing off with one skate. The toes are starting to pinch in them already, and he's about ready for a newer, bigger pair. 

Skates are expensive, and he knows his parents don't have much extra at the moment. Not with Kostya in university, and the other kids still at home. Victor wiggles his toes inside his skates, and thinks he can wait a little longer.

"So what are you going to do?" Georgi asks in the gap between one piece of background music and the next. They're supposed to be cooling down after practice, and they fall into sync as they skate slow laps around the rink.

Victor shrugs, because what can he do? He's not a girl, and he's not going to ask one of the girls to show him how. "I'll figure out something." 

For a long moment, Georgi watches him, wearing that pinched look that means he's trying to talk himself into-- or out of-- something.

Victor knows that look like the back of his hand. They've been sharing a room for two years now, and Victor knows Georgi Popovich better than anyone in the world. They're not that similar, really; if it wasn't for the skating, Victor isn't sure they'd be friends. Georgi's from Moscow, and his family is still there; his mother is pregnant with triplets, and she calls Georgi every day to make sure he's alright.

They're planning to move to St. Petersburg, just as soon as his father gets a transfer.

It'll be strange, not having him on the other side of their dorm room.

"If all the girls can do it, how hard can it be?"

That night, Georgi sits cross legged on the side of Victor's bed, gripping a brush in one hand and a collection of mismatched elastics and hair barrettes in the other. It looks terrible when they're done; a mess of lopsided braids that sounded so much easier in the magazine, and black bobby pins jammed haphazardly through the pale strands.

Divide the hair into small sections, secure with bobby pins. Which kept sliding out.

Plait the hair, moving from the temple to the crown. Crown?! And how were they supposed to plait anything with it turning into a knotted mess?

Secure with more slippery little bastard pins.

Victor's scalp aches when he curls into bed that night, but he can't stop smiling. Best friends are a strange thing, he thinks to himself; even when they're just as lost and confused as you are, at least you know you're lost together.

The next day Lilia sighs in defeat, and plants Victor in front of the long bank of mirrors before class starts. She's not gentle as she undoes the mess they've made with their best intentions, but she shows him how to pull the fine, slippery strands back into a bun. 

When Victor looks into the mirror, the severe style makes his cheekbones look sharper, and his face look older. He isn't sure if he likes it, but he learns to do it himself.

And that afternoon on the ice, Sasha smiles at him from across the rink, and Yakov just rolls his eyes.

It's easier to skate when he can see.

**...**

Victor is twelve, and determined to master his quadruple salchow before his next birthday. Even if it means sneaking into the rink every morning before Yakov arrives. It's less than a year before he can enter the Juniors, and he's been counting the days. They're crossed out in bold marker on the calendar over his bed, like a road map leading to his thirteenth birthday.

This is what he's been training for.

This is what he had left Siberia for. And his family. 

Victor didn't know that in a hospital in Moscow, a little boy was screaming his rage at being forced into the world. 

It would be another decade before they would meet, and by then, Victor would be on top of the world.

Yuri Plisetsky would be yelling then, too.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's his first year in Juniors, and already eyes are starting to turn to him. They linger too long on his spins, and they count the rotations in his jumps-- and re-count them to be sure. They're waiting for him to fall before he has the chance to fly, because some people want to see beautiful things shatter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus chapter this week! I was going to try and get it finished for next week, but I woke up this morning to such wonderful, supportive comments that it really gave me the push I needed to get it finished!

**[ five . ]**

Victor is thirteen, and he knows that everyone will be watching him soon. 

It's his first year in Juniors, and already eyes are starting to turn to him. They linger too long on his spins, and they count the rotations in his jumps-- and re-count them to be sure. They're waiting for him to fall before he has the chance to fly, because some people want to see beautiful things shatter.

Not that Victor thinks he's beautiful.

Puberty is rarely kind to anyone. His voice crackles when he speaks, and things are changing. He's changing, and his features don't fit on his face anymore. Victor looks in the mirror and it's awkward, and people used to tell him how pretty he was-- but they won't say that anymore, because he's all made wrong. 

Lilia rolls her eyes when he comes into the studio with the toes of his tights cut off, because the alternative is having them constantly pulled too low on his waist. Nothing fits as it should, but there's no money to replace everything on a bi-monthly basis. 

She doesn't look surprised. And she doesn't comment, for which he's forever grateful

Yakov pretends not to notice when he trips coming off the ice because his legs are longer than they were a week before. He's been coaching people for much longer than Victor has been alive, and none of this surprises him, either. 

Training helps. It reminds Victor where his arms and legs are, and it keeps him in competition shape, even when he's constantly, voraciously hungry.

Georgi is going through the same, and they don't talk about it. He's got a shadow of a sad little moustache that he has to shave now, and Victor's hair is so light that he's not sure he ever will.

They're growing in tandem, too long and made of bones and sharp angles, always hungry and unsettled in their skins. But it's nice to know that someone else is just as victim to the whims of their biology as he is. They're clumsier than before, and it's frustrating, even when they know it won't last. 

Victor takes to wearing the longest t-shirts he can find; because he skates at the same rink as Sasha Dmitriev, and sometimes Victor finds his eyes wandering when they're in the change room. He shouldn't look -- he's been in St Petersburg for three years now, and he knows better, because there are unspoken rules about that. 

You don't look, you keep your eyes on the wall. And nobody looks at you.

But Sasha has just turned twenty, and Victor knows he's seeing someone because he has bruise red love bites across his shoulders. And they're fascinating, dark against his skin, and Victor wants to trace his fingers over them, to see if he's as soft as he looks. Or if the bruises are warmer than the rest of him.

He doesn't understand why the sight of the little scattered collections of broken blood vessels makes him feel hot and feverish, uncomfortably aware of his skin, and the confines of his body. It's maddening, but there's nobody here to ask.

Victor's stomach tenses hard when Sasha rests his hand on his shoulder after three failed jumps in a row. 

"We all have clumsy days. You should have seen me, I think Yakov was going to ban me from the ice for my own safety when I was thirteen." Sasha murmurs quietly, under his breath, like he was imparting a secret for Victor's ears only.

He smells of sweat, and faded soap, and the mentholated liniment he uses for his shoulder. 

Long t-shirts hide all manner of teenage sins.

**...**

His Junior debut is terrifying. 

He's never skated for so many people before, and the stands of the arena seem to go on forever. The music echoes differently here, and it'll be a miracle if he doesn't trip and fall on his head. 

He can feel the cold seeping up through the blades of his skates, traveling one frozen molecule at a time; and his stomach churns like he's swallowed too much of the vinegar from the bottom of the pickle jar.. 

When they put his name on the overhead screen, it's spelled with a C, instead of a K. Yakov is fuming, but Victor can't take his eyes away from it.

It's a mistake, but he likes it.

He'll never be mistaken for the other Viktor if they're spelled differently. He'll never be  _ that other Russian Viktor _ .

When Victor pictures his name in his head it looks different. It's Виктор, the same way he signs it when people ask for autographs. It doesn't happen often, but it's becoming more common. 

He could get used to this, too. 

That night, he looks at his new gold medal, and practices writing his new name over, and over, and over again. The pen cramps in his hand, and he keeps needing to check the spelling because Latin letters look so strange and round.

But if he's going to claim a new name from this mistake, this easy little typo, then he's got to act now. Otherwise they'll fix it, and the opportunity will be gone.

Outside of Russia, people don't understand pretty Cyrllic letters, or nicknames, or patronymics. They assume Victor has always lived in St. Petersburg, and that all of this has come easily-- because he wants to make it look effortless.

They don't want to know that Victor is weeks behind in school, or that everyone knows he won't finish. There aren't enough hours in the day for practice and studies, and Victor is winning back the medals, and the pride, that had once belonged to Russia.

He's the student of the great Lilia Baranovskaya. Coached by Yakov Feltsman himself.

Victor is thirteen, and starting to understand what being the best in the world will cost.

**...**

The hallways of the St Petersburg medical centre are familiar, Victor's been here a dozen times. For himself, for other skaters: you can't spend your waking life throwing yourself into the air and colliding with the ice without a few injuries.

But this is not the same. This wasn't the ice rushing up to meet Sasha, or a toe pick catching the surface on a bad landing. It was a car, and a drunk man behind the wheel, and it shouldn't be like this, it shouldn't!

Georgi is holding his hand, and Victor's grateful for his presence, because it makes it easier to be brave. Their hands are clammy and damp, cold sweat gathering in the space between their palms.

Sasha will never skate again. Not competitively. Not like he used to. 

In one stupid moment, everything changed for him. And Victor's never imagined a life without this; without the ice, and the applause, and the endless days of training. 

He remembers watching Sasha when he arrived in St. Petersburg, and wanting to skate like him. He thinks of chipped nail polish, and the tiny, sparkly hair barrettes that he keeps in his skate bag. 

There will be no more jumps in Sasha's future, no more training. No more choreography. And Victor knows that Yakov is trying to find him a job at the rink; maybe teaching the youngest children, because someone has to, and Sasha is patient with them.

He doesn't have many other options. None of them have finished school, the ice is all they really know. All they have to offer the world.

And when Victor and Georgi step into his hospital room, it's Sasha that pulls them down against his chest in a hug that smells of Betadine and copper, and the faded traces of the cold muscle rub they all use.

Victor knows he should be the one comforting Sasha,-- he's not hurt, he's fine, even though the tears rolling down his face tell another story. It's unfair, so unfair, and Victor is angry and sad, and it's all bubbling up in his chest like a poison.

"Shh, Vitya... Georgi... It's alright. It's going to be alright. I'm alive, that's all that really matters."

Sasha's hands are warm on his shoulders, and Victor can feel the slow throb of his pulse against the edge of one scapulae. He wants to make things better, he wants to turn back time-- to tell Sasha not to leave the rink.

That it was dangerous, and one little, tiny decision was going to change his whole life. He was supposed to have years left in his career, and now Yakov is talking about physiotherapy, and prosthetics, and Lilia is watching from the door. She's guarding over the student she loved, because he has no future in dance now; but she still worries.

This was not the way it was supposed to end.

**[ six . ]**

Victor is fourteen, and there are expectations when the Federation is paying for you to do what you love.

He lives in the dorms, across the hall from Georgi, because they're older now, and they need their space.

Victor's hair is growing long, even though Yakov tells him he looks like a girl. Maybe he does, but he has a handful of gold medals, and people are watching to see what he does next.

He's young, and learning to smile for the camera, even when his feet are bleeding inside his shoes. 

> _ Victor Nikiforov, Russia's rising star. _
> 
> _ Victor Nikiforov, who could be the next Robbie Miralles. _

And when Victor looks in the mirror, sometimes he doesn't recognize himself anymore. 

**[ seven . ]**

Victor is sixteen, and Robbie's number is on his cell phone.

He's twenty-nine, and still glides across the ice like he was made to be there. And Victor watches from the sidelines, even though Yakov keeps telling him not to bother. That he shouldn't be comparing himself to the competition.

And Victor doesn't tell him that it isn't a comparison, that he knows Robbie is better than he is. Because the alternative is that Victor is better than Robbie, and that just doesn't make any sense to him.

It's not possible, whispers the voice of his own four-year-old self in his mind. He wants to be better than Robbie, but it's like a dream. Intangible.

Victor is rising, flying through the ranks of the other skaters in the Senior division, his scores speaking for themselves. And soon there won't be any competition at all, as long as he doesn't burn himself out, first. He's young, and everything feels new.

This is what he's worked for, this is what he's dreamed of since he was a little boy, watching Robbie on television.

Robbie was his age, then. But the difference just makes things more exciting.

He flirts with Victor between events, coiling his fingers through his long, pale hair, and joking that it's even more grey than his. Robbie dyes his curls the same inky black Victor remembers from the grainy television in his parent's living room. But Victor can see the roots where the grey is starting to come through. 

He's not old, not really, but twenty-nine is ancient in figure skating years, and everyone knows that this is his last season.

Victor's made the Olympic team, and he smooths his fingers over the jacket. It's white, with blue and red, and the gold eagle rising over his left shoulder. It's defiantly Russian, and he feels proud whenever he pulls it on.

He can hear the tears in his mother's voice when she calls to tell him how proud she is.

Victor Nikiforov is going to the Olympics. And Georgi might be, too; the committee is still deliberating.

>> _ Congratulations, sweetie! Another gold.  _ _   
_ >> _ Should I be worried that you're coming for my title? _

Robbie texts him from Skate America, and the term of endearment makes Victor's chest feel light and fluttery. The world is a wonderful place, and he's so very much in love. 

He's counting the days until the Grand Prix, because they haven't seen each other since Skate Canada, and Victor still can't believe he took the gold. It was like stepping into the Twilight Zone, standing on the podium with Robbie beside him; but one level down. Sometimes he still has to fish the medal out of his drawer to look at it, part of him waiting for the 1st Place engraving to have changed in the night.

Then Robbie texts him-- from Trophée de France, this week-- and the world is slowly settling into a new configuration. One with Robbie's name on his phone, and his voice laughing in his ear through the speaker when they have the chance to call.

Victor had won, and Robbie had suddenly found him fascinating. It feels like he won the lottery.

<< _ I was lucky! _

>> _ You don't win by luck, sweetie. You're good, maybe even good enough to take silver in Italy. _

<< _ I hope so! _ _   
_ << _ And I miss you. _

>> _ Just a few more weeks! Miss you too. xoxoxo _

**...**

It isn't supposed to be like this. 

Victor's always been a romantic. Always knew that reality wouldn't live up to the fantasies he's been imagining since he was old enough to know what love was. That's just being realistic, managing his expectations. 

So he doesn't mind that they're on a hard hotel bed, the sheets smelling of the industrial cleaner they use to get out the stains from the thousand humans that have slept in them before. And Victor is fairly sure that isn't what he's supposed to be thinking about when Robbie is--

His Robbie, who's been so patient with him, even when he changed his mind the night before--

Who didn't blame Victor when he asked him to slow... please slow... please, it hurts--

Even when it was obvious that he was getting annoyed with the interruptions. 

Victor holds his breath when Robbie pushes back into him, tasting the copper on his tongue where he bit his lip. If he doesn't breathe, he won't cry; he just has to get used to this. It's new. 

Robbie promised it would stop hurting soon. And he knows more than Victor.

Victor is a professional athlete, he knows how to smile through pain. But this is different; it's inside him, burning and hot, and he can feel the sharp thrusts in the space behind his belly button. And part of Victor doesn't want this, not like this; but he's committed, now.

He'd promised he would. And he wants Robbie to keep loving him.

With his face pressed into the pillow, Victor can't see the look on Robbie's face. THe world has contracted down to the creases on the pillow, and the edge of the headboard. But he can hear the low, grunting noises he makes when he puts his weight into his thrusts, making the bed creak under them. 

Victor's going to feel this in the morning, it's going to burn when he's on the ice, and he is starting to realize that this was a bad idea. (He thinks he should have figured that out earlier, he should be smarter than this. But he's sixteen and in love, and this is all so new.)

Everything aches when Robbie finishes with a groan, and Victor can feel the warm wetness of his release trickling down the back of his thigh. Victor isn't hard anymore, hasn't been for a while, and mostly he's just grateful that it's over.

Now Robbie can hold him, like he's promised to do a thousand times over text.

The bed creaks again when Robbie gets up, reaching for the closest piece of clothing-- Victor's shirt-- and wiping himself down. He leaves streaks of come and lube across the front; and Victor wants to protest, but mostly he's just confused. 

Robbie's looking for his own clothes, and Victor doesn't know how to process this, because it doesn't make sense.

He's supposed to stay. He'd promised he'd stay. But he's getting dressed, and the sound of his zipper is loud in the deafening silence of the hotel room. 

He's leaving, and Victor is starting to realize what this has all been about.

Robbie is halfway to the door before he looks back, the ruddy flush of his orgasm still hot on his skin, and Victor wants to scream but the sound won't come out. It's stuck there in the back of his throat; which might be for the best, because the hotel is old and the walls are thin.

"Don't cry, sweetie. It's nothing personal. But I'm not going to come in second in my last year-- and not to some little Russki kid. You were competition, that's all. Don't take it so personally."

Competition. Past tense. And Victor is still learning English, but he's improving every day, and he can't miss the snide sarcasm that's slipped into Robbie's formerly friendly voice.

It's an ugly sound, and an irrational part of him wants to cover his ears with his hands. There are tears running down his face, and Victor knows he looks like a disgusting mess. He feels filthy, inside and out, and Robbie's sweat and release is drying on his skin.

It was sabotage. 

And Victor is Russian, he understands how cutthroat sports can be. People take accidental falls all the time. They have things planted in their bags, or in their skates. 

But this is different.

This is betrayal from the inside, and the knowledge that he should have known better. Victor doesn't want to be a statistic: young, gay, and so stupidly naive.

Robbie is smiling when he leaves, and Victor barely manages to make it to the garbage can in the corner before he's sick.

**[ eight . ]**

Yuri is four, and it feels like his mother's face is everywhere.

It's always been like this, a little. On ad campaigns and commercials, her voice sounding canned and tinny over the old television. Yuliana Semenova is the classic Russian beauty, blonde and blue eyed, with high cheekbones that look wonderful on film. 

She sings and dances, and smiles for the camera, a glittering figure that doesn't make sense in Yuri's mind. He knows that mothers are supposed to live with their children, but his doesn't. She lives in a world so far removed from his grandparent's apartment, one with celebrities and money, instead of his grandparent's peeling laminate floor and the heater that always seems to die in the middle of the winter. 

The world doesn't know about Yuri, and he knows this because he heard his grandparents talking one night when he was supposed to be asleep. People will look at her differently if they knew, they explained when Yuri confronted them.

He doesn't understand why he has to be a secret.

Today she's singing the national anthem to start the Grand Prix, and Yuri thinks that's unfair, too-- because she doesn't care about skating, and he does. She gets to be there in the arena, instead of watching him skate. 

And it makes him mad, but he doesn't want to turn off the tv because this is temporary, and he does want to see who wins.

Grandpa doesn't know much about figure skating, but his arm is heavy and warm around Yuri's shoulders, and he's watching-- learning-- because Yuri's decided that this is what he wants to do. He's good on the ice, better than the other boys, best in his class. 

And his grandpa's arm tightens, pulling Yuri into his lap, blanket and all, when his mother comes on the screen.

"You'll come watch me tomorrow, won't you Grandpa?" He asks, instead of watching her sing, his face tilted back so far that he can look up at his grandfather upside down. 

"I can't, but your Grandma will. I'll be there next time, I promise."

And that's almost better than his mother, because his grandmother always lets him get hot chocolate after he gets off the ice. It warms up his hands, but not as much as when she lets him steal sips of her coffee.

She always pretends not to see.

"I thought this was boy's skating." His grandpa points out, and his beard tickles the top of Yuri's blonde head when he points his chin at the screen. 

"That is a boy, Grandpa! It's Victor Nikiforov. Everyone says he's good." Yuri grinned and made himself comfortable in his grandpa's lap, happy to stay there for the duration of the program. It was warm, and nothing could really go wrong when his grandparents were home.

"A boy? No, that's a girl!" He teased back, with that low, gravely laugh that made Yuri want to laugh, too, "Look at her hair. I'm sorry, Yurochka, you must need glasses!"

"Nikolai, behave! He's a very pretty boy." 

"I guess we know who your Grandma's favourite is! Is he yours, too?" 

Yuri laughed when his grandmother ducked out of the kitchen to swat his grandpa with her dish towel. "No! He's not. I like the one with the black hair." He points from his cocoon towards the screen, just in time for the camera to pan across the other Russian skaters on the sidelines. "He's more fun to watch."

Victor was everyone else's favourite. The girls giggled about him at the rink, and the announcers talked about him like he was some kind of skating god. 

Yuri thought it was all stupid-- he's going to be better than Victor someday, he knows it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He's going to be amazing, someday. Maybe better than me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone, I hope you're all having a wonderful week! 
> 
> Winter has arrived here, so I might be updating a little more frequently than just once a week, it depends on how much I want to hide from the snow! Anyway, onto the chapter!

**[ nine . ]**

Victor is seventeen, and the best in the world. He has the records to prove it.

He's living in Lilia Baranovskaya's spare room, which is nicer than the dorms. Even when he can feel her eyes burning between his shoulder blades, analyzing his posture. The motion of his arms. The length of his legs.

He can see the water from his window, blue-grey under the winter sky. Victor wakes to the sound of gulls, and wishes he could fly, too.

Lilia isn't soft, and she isn't his mother. But sometimes she'll pause before going to bed, brushing his hair from his face with an unreadable something half hidden behind her eyes.

Lilia never had children of her own; the price for her status, her perfection, her reinvention. 

She is the strongest woman Victor's ever met, and he wants to make her proud.

Sometimes she reminds him of Yakov-- which makes sense because they were married, and sometimes it feels like they still are. They trade sidelong glances, longing and wistful, when they think the other isn't looking. 

They've traded everything for their careers, even each other. 

There are pictures of them on the walls, when Lilia was still young and beautiful. She looks happy in them, even though Victor knows that life in Russia wasn't easy then. 

He also knows that Yakov was a skater when they met; that he won a medal at the Olympics when he was twenty-five, and that Lilia thought he was the most handsome man she had ever seen. She's told him how Yakov dragged her out onto the ice, even though she'd sworn to her ballet school that she would never skate. 

How it had been love at first sight. And sometimes when they look at each other, Victor thinks it still is.

Victor doesn't need to ask why their marriage ended, because there is a blood cost for excellence, and they are both still at the top of their pyramid.

Even if they're teaching now, instead of doing.

Love doesn't conquer everything. Victor's taken that lesson to heart, but he still wants to be proven wrong. 

People come from all over the world to learn from Yakov and Lilia-- Victor was one of them, and Georgi, and Sasha and Viktor... They are institutions in Russia, and they orbit one another like satellites caught in each other's trajectory, steady and spinning endlessly. 

Victor has a medal from the Olympics as well, a flash of bright silver against all the gold in his closet. He was scarcely seventeen, and heartsick; and how could you skate a program about joy when every part of you felt bruised? 

The only thing he really cares about was that Robbie didn't take the gold.

He doesn't think he could have stomached looking up at Robbie on the podium, smug and triumphant, and carrying Victor's virginity like a trophy.

Or a spoil of war.

He came in third, and Victor had seen him angry and sullen, white knuckled fingers clutching the bronze. 

It felt like a victory, not over Robbie, because he was retiring and Victor had stubbornly refused to pin his whole career on beating one man. But he had proven to himself that he could still skate-- he could still win-- even with the touch memory of Robbie's hands on his body, and the nightmare memories of their night together.

He has fans now, men and women alike casting him come-hither glances from the seats, and the other side of hotel lobbies. Sometimes it's tempting, and they offer themselves so freely; but Victor wears his heart on his sleeve, and he doesn't think he's looking for a person to keep him warm.

Victor is lonely, but there are mistakes he will never make again. 

They're shameful, and under his skin; but he's made mistakes before and he knows how to learn from them. Robbie Miralles is a figure of the past, and Victor Nikiforov will be the future. He won't accept anything else.

"Don't stay up too late, you're going to be in the studio early tomorrow."

Maybe, Victor wonders as Lilia touches his silver-grey hair, unreadable and proprietary, that's the only way she knows how to take care of people.

**[ ten . ]**

Victor is eighteen, and feels like he’s leaving people behind. Every new medal is like a wall, hard and steep, made of glittering gold..

He's the best in the world. The records he breaks are his own.

There are no common enemies at the top of the pyramid, because you are the enemy for everyone. They watch him closely, and it's nothing personal when they meanly wish he would stumble. Fall. Make life a little easier for them-- because they're never going to win while Victor is at his best.

Off the ice they're friendly, contemporaries, like colleagues. They follow each other on social media, and like photos of their pets, rinks, traveling, training, and the healthy, horrible food that's supposed to keep them in competition shape. 

[  _ Man cannot live on kasha alone!  _ ]

Victor laughs out into the void, and Christophe Giacometti laughs back.

They're friends, becoming friends, and he comments on Victor's posts now that they're both in the same division. Even though they only see each other a few times a year. 

Christophe doesn't treat him like the enemy.

Victor has a new apartment in St. Petersburg, a place of his own. But it's more like a storage facility, because during the season it feels like he spends most of his life at the rink, or on a plane. It's plain, but comfortable, and it's the first time he's ever had this much space of his own.

Victor arrives back in the city, jet lagged and leaning against Georgi because they're both exhausted, and the flight from America always feels so long.

There’s nobody coming to meet him.

**[ eleven . ]**

Victor is nineteen, and the best in the world.

His body is a minefield of bruises and sprains, every stumble adding to the collection of purple and sickly green and yellow. He lives on Epsom salts and carefully monitored painkillers; because Victor wouldn't be the first athlete in the world to develop an addiction. It's so easy when everything hurts, and you just want to make it go away for a while.

"You have to stop." Georgi tells him, a furrow of worry between his brows. They're sitting across the small table in the corner of the cafe, warming their hands on black coffee-- Victor isn't the only one who needs to stay in competition shape, and neither of them can afford the calories. 

It's an acquired taste, but neither of them has acquired it, yet. Still, the caffeine boost helps, and the heat through the paper cups chases away the combined chill of the Russian winter, and the last five hours on the ice. 

"You're going to wreck yourself if you aren't careful. Nobody's body can put up with this kind of abuse forever."

The thing they never tell you about being the best, is that everyone is competing against you. The media puts your name on the fronts of magazines, and they talk about you like you're something  _ special _ ; like you don't work just as hard as anyone else. Harder. 

Like he doesn't have feet that bleed, and a dozen places that his body is already threatening to ache later. Victor Nikiforov is the best because he's willing to sacrifice anything he needs to, including himself.

The problem with being so good, so young, (Victor doesn't feel young, not anymore) is that there's nowhere else to go. He competes against himself, because nobody else is rising to the challenge. And maybe they can't, not really. Not anymore.

They've been friends for almost a decade, and Victor sees the way Georgi looks at him sometimes. When he's in second. Third. 

When he's knocked off the podium because Christophe Giacometti is good, and getting better. And there's a new skater from Britain who has some of the best choreography that Victor's ever seen. 

Flying back to Russia with nothing to show for the hours he spends on the ice, while Victor has another gold.  _ Another _ .

They all fight for silver and bronze; and the mountain of gold in Victor's closet is growing taller, and collecting dust.

Because the world of professional sports in Russia is cutthroat, and Georgi's good-- better, amazing-- but not the best. One day, Victor thinks, the pressure of coming in second, third, fourth, is going to wear him down. 

And when it does, he won't blame the world, and he won't blame Russia-- he'll blame Victor. 

Victor has a target on his back, painted in his own success. Bright with gold and blood. 

But for now, Georgi is still his best friend, leaning against the other side of the table, just like they did when they were younger. When they still shared a room, a space, and Victor had fallen asleep every night to the sound of his breathing.

For now, Georgi worries.

"I'll be fine."

**[ twelve . ]**

Victor is twenty, and even he can land badly.

It's the first season he's missed since childhood, trapped in his apartment with a knee brace and a bottle of painkillers.

The whole world seems unfair, because he's supposed to be there. He's worked so hard, and so long, and the media is hateful-- they speculate and lie, and of course Victor is going to skate again. He's hurt, but not catastrophically, and he's young.

He'll find a way back. Because this is temporary, and Victor won't allow it to be the end.

That year he watches everything from his couch, tethered to the sport he loves by the tv screen and a string of texts.

Georgi takes gold. 

**[ thirteen . ]**

Victor is twenty-two, and the summer camp students have arrived again. 

It's always chaotic, the rink overrun with hopeful children, their noses red and cheeks chapped from the cold that always radiates from the ice. Twelve years ago, this was Victor and Georgi, and it's hard to believe that it's been so long.

Sometimes it feels like another person's life; and Victor's memories of Siberia get a little fuzzier every day. 

"He's going to be amazing, someday. Maybe better than me." Victor says thoughtfully, sounding more hopeful than he feels. The boy on the ice is throwing himself at the world, skates gleaming and kicking up tiny sprays of snowy ice crystals. He's smaller than the other boys, but Victor doesn't think that's going to slow him.

And it won't stop him. 

They've both seen other athletes come and go. They've seen skaters that never quite grew into their potential (Victor pretends not to hear Georgi's sigh). And those who had been cut down by injury too young. 

It doesn't matter that Sasha hadn't been hurt on the ice, only that he'd never come back to it the same. Even if he claimed to enjoy teaching the children's classes. There was nothing shameful in teaching toddlers how to stay on their feet, but Victor's chest burns when he remembers how beautiful Sasha had been.

The faces around the rink have changed, but this year-- like every year-- will bring two new faces. And Victor doesn't have to wonder if this new child; all anger and determined lines, blonde hair pushed back from his face; will be one of them.

He skates circles around the other students.

"If he doesn't wreck himself first." Georgi sighs again, this time for the boy throwing himself into the air, pushing desperately for enough height to complete his rotations.

Victor nods, his chin propped on his hand. Once upon a time, he and Georgi had watched the older skaters; they'd admired their forms, and their music, and envied their skill. 

Now they watch the new hopefuls, and they see the unsteady ankles and arms that lock at the shoulders, tense with nerves. They see different things now, more experienced, and more critical. They know what they're looking for in this new generation of skaters.

Did Viktor and Sasha ever watch them, he wonders. Did he and Georgi look this small to them?

There is no doubt that Yuri Plisetsky will be staying with the rink after summer camp. 

"Da... As long as he doesn't."

**[ fourteen . ]**

Yuri is eleven, and he knows the world isn't fair. But it isn't supposed to be like this.

His grandmother is supposed to be home, not laying in a hospital room. And his grandfather is supposed to be home, too, not sitting at her bedside. Yuri can hear the sound of the machines on the other end of the phone, and he doesn't need to ask if she's going to get better. 

Because he's not a child anymore, and he knows what it means when his grandfather promises, "We're hoping." 

"I want to come home." He says, and his voice sounds shaky and young in his own ears. It feels like the first week he arrived in St. Petersburg, and he didn't know anyone.

Now he can only think of his grandfather rattling around the old apartment with the faded, peeling wallpaper; all green and covered in a pattern of daisies that his grandmother had loved. 

They need her, because he's not in Moscow anymore, and his grandfather shouldn't be there alone. He doesn't want him to be alone. 

"You have work to do there, Yurochka. You need to focus on that."

And Yuri is old enough to read between those lines, too. There's not enough money for a ticket home; there's never been enough. His grandmother was the one who made miracles and feasts out of the little they had-- but the Federation doesn't pay Yuri much yet, and the Russian government pension pays his grandfather even less.

He knows vaguely how much money is in his account, and that it isn't enough. The train is expensive, and flights are even more; and Yuri isn't sure that Yakov would even let him leave if he asked. 

But he wants to see his grandmother, and he wants to say goodbye-- because what if this is his only chance? 

And what if he misses it? 

She's been mother, and grandmother. The maker of sandwiches and the one who told him that he could be a figure skater, and not a hockey player. She loved him... Loves him... 

How could he miss his chance to say goodbye over something as stupid as money?

"I want to go home." Yuri snuffled his tears into the sleeves of his sweater, "Please, grandpa. I'll pay for myself, I'll find some way to get the money!"

"Don't cry, Yurochka. We're still hoping she'll get better."

Everyone knew that the back stairwell was the only place in the rink to have a private conversation; though usually it was claimed by young couples, sneaking around in search of some alone time. He was still there when Victor peeked his head around the side of the door a while later, his expression caught between exhaustion and relief.

"I thought you might be here. Yakov thought you'd run off. What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I'm  _ fine. _ " 

Victor isn't good at comforting people, he never has been. He's made of good intentions and terrible execution, all thumbs when it comes to tears. 

They've never met before, not officially, but they've been sharing a rink for over a year; and Victor has seen him coming and going. Yuri's loud, all childish limbs and long, sharp angles; obstinate and stubborn. Yuri Plisetsky demands attention with every line of his body.

Even now, huddled in the stairwell with snot and tears on his sleeves, and his eyes red-rimmed. Victor doesn't know what happened, but he remembers being young, and very far from home. 

"Are you giving up?"

"No! I want to go home to see my Grandma. And then I want to come back and be better than you!"

He's defiant, angry and the world, and Victor remembers being eleven, too, and everything seeming so unfair. So he does the only thing he can think of-- he sits down beside this boy that shares his rink, and that burning, red thread that ties both of them to the ice, and to this life.

"She's sick?" He guesses, and Yuri doesn't need to reply, because the desolation under his bravado speaks volumes. Victor draws up one knee and drapes his arms around it; because he doesn't think this proud, furious creature would appreciate a hug.

He thinks for a moment, and what use is having money if he can't use it? "Alright." Victor hums, and lifts one shoulder in a shrug, "I'll pay for you to go home, if you promise me you'll come back, and beat me."

Yuri's brow furrows, dark and suspicious. He knows Victor earns more than he does-- he's the living legend, the pride of Russian skating, the best in the world-- and the Federation rewards that. But Yuri's not destitute, and he doesn't want charity. "I can't pay you back." He reminds him, but it sounds sulkier now. Petulant. He hates it.

"I didn't say you had to."

"Then you can't retire before I get to Seniors, old man."

Victor can't remember the last time he smiled so easily, "I promise."


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His fans know him from magazine quizzes, and trivia, and Yuri thinks it's all so stupid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, an extra chapter this week! Because really, couldn't most Mondays use a bit of Victurio to brighten them up?

**[ fifteen . ]**

Yuri is twelve, and he's been in St Petersburg for two years. 

It's become familiar, even though walking through the central core makes him feel like he's stumbled into one of his history textbooks. Beautiful and grim, and gilded like he imagines the world might have been before the Soviet Union turned everything utilitarian and functional.

He doesn't even mind the rain, though sometimes it feels like that's all it does here, and the sound of the gulls has just become part of the background noise.

It isn't Moscow. And that's becoming alright.

But more importantly, there is no Grandpa here. 

It's too expensive to call often, so he hoards his minutes for the days he needs to hear the sound of his voice. The days when texts just aren't enough, because this isn't home, and it never will be, and he hates feeling small more than anything in the world. 

Grandpa doesn't like smart phones, or texting; he's a man of pen and paper, and waiting for the post. But he's learning, too. For Yuri. Because there's something reassuring about being able to know he's safe. No waiting. No delays.

He sends texts.

Yuri sends photos, and videos of his training, and the other skaters. Of St. Petersburg, and the food he's trying. 

And one day he's going to send him pictures of the places he's visiting, and the hotels he's staying in; and it's all going to be captioned with Yuri's own brand of razor wit. He's sharpening it, and it makes his grandpa laugh.

Nikolai Plisetsky has never left Moscow, but his grandson will. 

But for now his days are all the same. He goes to school in the morning, and to the rink in the afternoon; it doesn't matter that he's only in the novices, because that's only a matter of time. The world has said he must be thirteen.

So he'll wait, but that doesn't mean he has to like it.

**...**

Victor listens when Yuri is angry. 

When he's ranting about the ice, and the travel, and the winter. Cutting Yakov and Mila and Georgi to bits with words. Yuri has a sharp tongue, and no filter when it comes to using it. It's keen and draws blood, and his insults are masterpieces of creative, juvenile frustration. He's pissed at the whole world, and nobody else has the patience to listen.

Victor always just nods, and sometimes that makes Yuri even more angry-- because he knows he's being managed, being indulged like a badly behaved cat. Victor is twenty-four, and he doesn't have to spend any time with Yuri at all.

But he chooses to, and Yuri likes to believe it's because he cares. 

Or because Yuri is going to beat him some day, and Victor is trying to keep an eye on the competition.

There are fans, and other adults, Victor has more fans than he knows what to do with. And Yuri doesn't care about any of them, because they only see the outside. They get the pretty selfies, and the smiles, and they swoon over Victor in the most disgusting ways. 

It makes Yuri a little sick, all the sycophantic begging for his attention. Victor might be the best in the world, but he also forgets to eat, and isn't as graceful off the ice as he is on it. He forgets to reply to messages, and talks about his dog too much. 

His fans know him from magazine quizzes, and trivia, and Yuri thinks it's all so stupid.

Question 1. Victor has a tattoo? _True_ / False   
True, he has the Olympic rings on the back of his left ankle, a drunken impulse when he was sixteen. Yuri's seen it when he takes off his skates and his sock slides down. Georgi has the same one, but the magazines never mention that.

Question 2. He was born in St. Petersburg? True / _False_   
False, and Yuri isn't sure where Victor is from exactly, but it's not here. It's somewhere north, and cold, and it sounds awful. He knows Victor hasn't been back in years, but he's never asked why.

Question 3. Victor was the first person to land a quad flip in competition? _True_ / False   
True, but Yuri doesn't think it's that impressive. Everyone had been trying, someone was going to accomplish it eventually.

Question 4. His favourite food is okroshka? True / _False_   
False. Anyone who thinks that has never seen the way he eats pickles like they're going to go extinct, or escape from his plate. It's a bit disgusting, actually. At this point, Yuri thinks Victor must be made of half cucumber and brine. 

Question 5. Victor's hair is naturally brown? True / _False_ _  
_ False. It's silver, and sometimes Yuri wants to reach out and touch it, just to see if it's as smooth as it looks. Yuri thinks it would look weird on anyone else, that pale grey, but he can't imagine Victor with any other colour.

Magazine Victor is nice, and charming, and Yuri thinks it's the most annoying thing in the world. It's a carefully crafted fiction, a make believe story, and the fans just seem to gobble it up; like they can't see the truth that's right in front of their stupid faces.

It's not kind, but Victor can be a bit of a bastard sometimes, too. He just never says the things he thinks.

Yuri loves the way he can make him laugh. 

**[ sixteen . ]**

Yuri is thirteen, and he's discovering that he really doesn't like hotels.

It's his first year in Juniors, and he's never traveled so much in all his life. America was interesting, and China was intimidating, but he never sleeps well when they're on the road. Too much jet lag and adrenaline, and his heart is tight in his chest because this is getting ridiculous.

So he paces the hallways, and tells himself that he'll still be able to get enough sleep before morning. Even though it's already after midnight, and his feet ache, and he's bored of the same ugly hallway. 

This isn't like the preliminaries in Russia; this is competing against the rest of the world, and there are people here who are good. Very good. Maybe better than he is-- and Yuri's been telling himself since he was a child that he was going to be the best. So what does it mean if they're better?

"Are you trying to wear a hole through the floor? The people below us might not like that."

Yuri looks up to see Victor leaning in his hotel room door, wearing just a pair of pajamas pants and a tired smile. His hair is a mess, long strands escaping the braid he'd plaited before he went to bed. 

Even from here, Yuri can see the dark circles under his eyes, bruise purple, and he's going to have to cover them with makeup before he goes on the ice tomorrow.

"Can't sleep." He mutters, even though that's abundantly obvious to anyone with eyes, or ears. Yuri crosses his arms, and cocks a hip, silently daring Victor to say anything about it.

Victor laughs, and Yuri is pretty sure he's going to have to smother him.

"You're sharing a room?"

"With Borya. He snores."

The invitation is implied when Victor steps back into his room and leaves the door open, though he waves Yuri in anyway. "You can share with me, if you don't steal all the blankets."

"Why?" But he's already following Victor inside. It doesn't look much different from Yuri's room; the same ugly painting on the wall, and the green and maroon cover on the bed. It smells like detergent and chemical cleaner, like all hotels, and the faded herbal something that Victor uses in the shower.

It's not a mess, because they've only been here a few hours. But his suitcase is open, and there are odds and ends scattered around the room. Sometimes even the seniors have to share-- even living legends-- but not tonight.

"I can't sleep with you pacing out there. It makes me tired just listening to you." Which was a lie, but the bed is just wide enough for two people, and they're both exhausted.

Besides, Borya always turns on the air conditioning, and Yuri is afraid that one day he's going to freeze to death in his bed.

The hard mattress gives under their joined weight with a muffled creak, and the sheets are still warm from Victor's body. Yuri pins himself to the far edge and lies still on his side, eyes closed and taking up as little room as possible.

He tries to ignore the presence beside him, but it's not working.

Victor never has trouble sleeping.

And he looks different when he's asleep. He's all long, loose lines, with shadows pooled under the curve of his eyelashes and the hollow of his throat. 

He doesn't look like the pictures on the magazine covers, and he isn't perfect; but Yuri likes the way his mouth falls slack, and his chest rises and falls when he breathes. This Victor sighs in his sleep, and gathers the blanket up to his chest like a teddy bear. 

Victor is only twenty-three, but he looks softer when he's asleep, younger. He's supposed to be the one taking care of Yuri-- he's bigger, stronger, he's the adult. And maybe he wouldn't let Yuri stay here if he knew he watched him when he was asleep.

He knows he shouldn't, but this is the only time he gets to see Victor without the mask. And maybe he's the only person that gets to see him like this, unguarded. 

Yuri has never been good at protecting fragile things, but he doesn't want to share this Victor with anyone. 

It happens once. Twice. 

A dozen times in the middle of the airport with his head in Victor’s lap, because he's still acclimating to so much travel, and it wears on him.

Yuri doesn't ask if Victor minds, because he isn't sure he wants the answer. So they continue on, and mostly Yuri sleeps in his own room-- but there are rough nights in Barcelona, and Shanghai, and Los Angeles, and it's comforting to know that he can claim the other side of Victor's bed.

They never mention it.

**...**

There are fans, gathering at the doors and pressing their faces up to the glass like demented horror movie monsters. They flush when Victor waves to them, like the only thing they've ever wanted is that scrap of his fleeting attention.

Victor stops, and smiles, and lets them take photos-- and Yuri hates every second of it, because he knows Victor's tired. He knows his feet are hurting, because Yuri's feet feel like they're bleeding into his sneakers, and this is the price they've both learned to pay for their ambitions.

You don't get to be the best without a cost in blood.

But Yuri is tired, and his body aches, and he knows that Victor is hurting-- so he doesn't understand why he's staying here, lingering over the fans, and they're so stupid that it makes Yuri want to scream. If they love Victor so much, why don't they let him rest? If they love him, why can't they see that he's got dark circles under his eyes?

A fourteen hour flight is hard enough without spending the whole next day on the ice. It's not fair, none of it, and Yuri wants to tell them all to go away. To leave them alone.

Yuri knows that eventually he's going to have fans of his own, and he's going to have to play nice. 

Be nice.

Smile for the cameras and let them take their treasured fragments of his attention.

But it makes him so angry to know that Victor is going to sway unsteadily as soon as they're away from the crowd, and their forever watching eyes. 

And he's going to laugh, like he isn't hurting, like he isn't halfway to being asleep on his feet.

Yuri doesn't fall for Victor being 'fine'. He sees the cracks in the mask, but he doesn't know to fix them.

Anyone who thinks Victor is happy is blind.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the small hours of Christmas morning, and Victor has been twenty-five for nearly fifteen minutes.

**[ seventeen . ]**

It's the small hours of Christmas morning, and Victor has been twenty-five for nearly fifteen minutes. 

He's been watching the calendar for over a year, this thing circled in blood red and the minerals of his bones solidifying. It feels old,  _ ancient _ , a quarter of a century and he's rocketing through life towards his own retirement.

Skating is not forever; not the way Victor does it, his body broken across the ice. A trade for the glory. 

He's been the best in the world for nine years, and the media calls him a legend. They paste his pictures on magazines, and snap photos when he leaves the house. 

They think they own him, because he smiles for the cameras and laughs at their jokes. 

And they call him  _ handsome  _ now, instead of beautiful, and Victor secretly hates it. It's supposed to be a compliment, but it feels like they've taken something from him. Something vital and precious, that he's been trying to safeguard for years. 

A piece of himself that they've stolen, like it was their right to give him these new labels. 

They've typecast as the prince, because he's gotten taller, his shoulders broader. He's still slender, fine boned and delicate-- but his mid-twenties have met him with a man's body. 

Standing at the mirror in his hotel room he gazes back at himself, and Victor feels like the flat, glossy reflection is more real than the one made of flesh and bone.

The bathroom lights are hard, nowhere to hide. They're glaring on his silver-grey hair; illuminating the dark, bruise purple shadows under his eyes. And somewhere in the bedroom his phone reminds him that it's the middle of the night.

They're in Switzerland for the Grand Prix this year. Victor's been here a few times, but his body is still adapting to the change in time and altitude. He has to be on the ice in seventeen hours, but he can't sleep. 

It's his birthday, he's twenty-five. And Victor feels like he's dying.

He doesn't know how to fix this, how to make himself whole. He's missing so many pieces, and the judges will be looking for blood in the morning. He doesn't know what he's going to reinvent himself into next; because it's all been done, and the crowds... The fans... The sponsors...

They're waiting. They want to be surprised. They want to take their little bloody pieces of flesh from him, so they can own a fragment of Victor Nikiforov. Living Legend.

Georgi has known Victor for fifteen years when he shows up outside his hotel room in the middle of the night with a pair of scissors. 

He knows it's a cry for help; screaming into the void and praying someone reaches back. 

Georgi doesn't know how to help. He wants to, he's always wanted to. But he's only one person, and Victor needs so much more than he can give alone. 

The scissors feel heavy when he takes them, and he hates this. He doesn't want any part of it, because Victor's been growing his hair for years. He loves it. It's a part of his identity-- it was his first rebellion against the Federation, and against the world that wanted to remake him into their idea of perfection.

One thing that's truly been Victor's idea of beautiful.

"Don't ask me to do this." Georgi asks, low and scared, as he cards his hand through the long, pale strands of Victor's hair, letting them drift through his fingers. "You don't have to do this."

_ You don't have to break yourself just because you're getting older. You can still be Victor, and that will be good enough. _

But Georgi doesn't say any of it, because he knows it might not be true. The world wants from Victor, it expects. And the more he surprises them, the more it demands.

"It's only hair." This time it's Victor's turn to lie. "It's just a vanity, and I'm not a teenager anymore. It's time I looked my age." 

They've live in a world of glitter and illusion mesh, telling stories with their bodies. The music and the ephemeral beauty of it are fleeting things.

But this will endure. This is years of Victor's life, and the fragments of his identity. 

And once they start, he won't be able to stop. To undo this mistake.

"Vitya, don't--"

"Please. I trust you."

Georgi grits his teeth, and the scissors sound horrific and loud in the stillness of the hotel room. If he didn't do this, he supposes Victor will do it himself. Alone in his room, with only the demons he carries for company. 

So he walks Victor over to the spare bed-- he was supposed to be sharing with Ivan, but he's found some girl, and he's staying with her tonight-- and carefully sits his bed friend down on the edge. "You'll surprise everyone tomorrow." He offers with a shaky laugh, and Victor's hands curl hard into the blankets under his knees.

He'll surprise them. 

And all he has to do is cut away another part of himself to do it.

**...**

Yuri is thirteen, and already he's in a good position to take the Junior Grand Prix gold. 

His body is humming, nervous, a sick weight in the pit of his stomach because this is what he's been working for. This is what he left Moscow for, and why he hasn't seen his grandpa in a very long time. 

He's come to win, and win, and win. Yuri's collecting medals that feel heavy on his chest. Heavier than he thought they would. 

And he's flying through the competition, until it's barely an afterthought. They can't match him, can't touch him, and this is all good. Wonderful. 

He sends his Grandpa pictures of Switzerland, and he can feel the warmth of his pride in every reply.

Yuri's brain is buzzing and he can't sleep, it's all too loud in his head. Physically he aches, but his mind won't stop, won't slow down enough to let him rest. He's been skating for years, but it's all been leading up to this.

So he's awake when he hears the sound of Victor's door opening, and closing. 

And how it's mirrored across the hall, because he must be going to see Georgi. 

What are they doing in the middle of the night?

For a few long moments, Yuri lies in bed, staring up at the shadows as they slide liquidly across the ceiling. Curiousity pressed against the insomnia, the two forces working in tandem to push aside the tangled sheets. 

After all, if he couldn't sleep anyway, he might as well find out what they were up to. And it's not like anything is going to wake his room mate, because Borya is snoring. He could sleep through a nuclear explosion, even if it was right outside the window.

Yuri's barefoot and still in his pajamas as he pads across the hallway, expecting to hear voices. But he's met with silence, and something twists uncomfortably in his belly. Like anxiety, or dread. 

It's a cold feeling, and he doesn't like it.

Yuri isn't sure he wants to know what's happening on the other side of the door, but he knocks anyway.

Georgi only opens it a crack, but it's enough. 

Enough for Yuri to see Victor kneeling on the edge of the bed, his head bowed like one of the images of the saints painted on the walls of the churches back in Moscow. His hair is half cut, long whorls of silver scattered across his knees and the dark bedspread, and it's wrong.

It's so very wrong. A fundamental, shifting of the world sort of wrong.

His Victor is a force of nature. He's a beautiful, improbable genius. 

He's the man who has the answers to all Yuri's questions. Not because he's some savant, clairvoyant; but because he's stood in those same shoes and knows how to find the traps that littered the path. Even the secret, sneaky ones that nobody else can see. 

Victor makes Yuri's fingers itch to touch; and it is foolish, but he wants to gather up the discarded silver strands in his hands. To put them back where they belong, because this isn't right!

He wants to undo it, and there are tears prickling at the corners of his eyes, though he doesn't understand why.

"Yura, you should go." Victor murmurs, eyes still downcast. 

His voice sounds soft, dead, and Yuri wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he sounds like himself again. Until he's Victor again, instead of this pale facsimile sitting on the bed, staring down at his hands, and the shorn hair, like he couldn't believe it belonged to him.

"I won't." He snaps, and stalks across to Georgi's bed, the blankets and sheets thrown back. Yuri squares his shoulders, prepared for a fight-- he welcomes a fight, because he understands anger. It's hot burning and clean, reducing everything it touches to ash.

If he's angry, he won't cry.

But Victor simply nods, and Georgi doesn't seem to have the heart to disagree.

For a long time, the only sound in the room is the sharp  _ snip-clip-snap _ of the scissors. Yuri doesn't think he'll ever forget that hateful sound.

It feels like someone is dying, and Victor can't breathe. It's all wedged in his chest, sharp edged and locked in place. The sound draws blood, and he's drowning in it. 

Nobody speaks a word when the tears start rolling down Yuri's cheeks. Because Victor can't cry for himself, and Yuri doesn't understand why this hurt so much. It's just hair, it will grow back if he wants it to!

Just hair, and it's still Victor no matter how long, or short, it is. He could shave it all away, and he would still be Victor-- so it's stupid to cry.

But it's more than hair, even if Yuri can't explain it to himself yet. It's an ending, and he's grieving for both of them.

Georgi's hands shake on the scissors, but Victor's family, and he won't make him do this alone.

Yuri wants to gather Victor into his stick thin arms and hold him to his chest. To protect him from anything, everything... From the world, and his fans.

And himself.

From Georgi and the scissors, even though Georgi looks like he's going to be sick.

But this time he doesn't. Can't. He's too young, too scared of what's happening right in front of him. And he’s never felt more helpless in his life.

None of them sleep that night.

In the morning, the real morning with the sun high in the sky instead of the moon, Yuri collects up a handful of Victor's hair, and carefully plaits the long strands into a smooth, thin braid. It's bright, and soft as he coils the length into the palm of his hand, and curls his fingers in; protective and possessive.

This is the only silver he wants. The only silver he'll ever want.

It's a little charm hidden in his skate bag, forever bright. His reminder to be better in the future, because this can never happen again. 

Later, the world will share a collective gasp when Victor steps out onto the ice, hair short and falling into his eyes. He's still handsome, he'll always be handsome-- but it's different, cutting across his cheekbones and turning them sharp.

Yakov looks like he wants to beat Victor-- because he worries. And even Yuri knows there's something wrong about this, something written in despair and not being able to ask for help. 

He reads Victor better than anyone, but he still hadn't seen this coming. 

Next time, he promises himself, running the silver braid through his fingers-- next time will be different.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He shares a rink with Victor. He sees him every day. 
> 
> Yuri knows what it sounds like when he laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ slides in and leaves this chapter, just before I have to run off to work! ]
> 
> I hope you all have a wonderful Halloween! 🎃

**[ eighteen . ]**

Yuri is fourteen, and Victor is twenty-six. He's a grown man, and fully capable of making his own decisions.

Yuri is not, but that's never stopped him before; and he has no intention of letting it stop him in the future. Besides, he tells himself, if the coordinators of the event didn't want people sneaking into the arena at night? They should make sure to lock the doors, instead of just pushing them closed. 

Anyone could get in. From the stories Mila's told him, people do.

He knows there are no locks, and no alarms, because Victor and that Giacometti guy aren't even trying to be sneaky. But Yuri is small, and he pulls the hood of his sweater up over his head to hide the telltale brightness of his hair -- it's given him away before, when he was little, and still thought he was smart enough to outwit his grandfather.

Without people in the seats, the music in the arena echoes, turned thin and insubstantial by the vast space. It reverberates off the walls and the endless smooth surfaces, and Yuri wishes he could put his fingers in his ears to muffle the Disney horribleness.

"Only that Swiss bastard would be stupid enough to try and seduce a Russian with  _ Anastasia _ ." 

It's dark inside, the only light coming from the long windows set high in the domed roof. It's a beautiful space during the day, but at night, Yuri can slip along between the rows, hidden by the absolute shadows. Even from there, he can see the smile on Victor's face as they move across the ice.

"Idiot... Figures he'd like this shit." 

Yuri tries not to think about the sticky something under his left sneaker as he crouches down between a row of seats and the back of the next aisle. Yakov would have both their heads for this, but Yuri and Victor have always been more curious than wise. 

With his sleeves pulled over his hands, and his hood low over his face, Yuri watches the couple on the ice with a sour taste in the back of his mouth. 

He can't make out what they're saying, and when Christophe finally, playfully ( _ morons _ ) catches up to Victor, his hands splayed across the other man's waist? Yuri is grateful the sound of their voices doesn't carry. 

He shares a rink with Victor. He sees him every day. 

Yuri knows what it sounds like when he laughs. And how hollow and plastic it's been for... Too long. He can't remember. Most of the time it makes him want to scream, to beat his fists against Victor's chest until he pounds all the fakery out of him. 

He wants to break Victor in his component parts until he can find whatever broke in him. 

Because nobody else is looking. Nobody else sees him the way Yuri does, and it's infuriating because he's fourteen, and he's too young to fix everything on his own! 

And Victor isn't making it any easier. Yuri might be hiding literally, squished up in the nosebleed seats-- but Victor's hiding in plain sight.

Down on the ice, Chris cups his cheek in his hand, and toys with the cropped short edges of Victor's hair. It's silver in the dim light, and Yuri knows just how soft it is. 

Yuri wants to howl. 

He wants to run down the aisle, lungs burning and his footsteps echoing in the void space. 

He hates Chris, and he's grateful to him, because Yuri can't hold Victor together, and he knows he's coming apart. Everyone wants to take pieces of him, and Yuri knows he's no better; that he wants to dig his fingers into Victor, to feel the bloody red truth of him. 

To know he can't hide from him anymore. Can't ever be  _ fine _ again. Or give him that stupid, fake smile that nobody else seems to realize is a lie!

Everyone sees the prince. 

But Yuri was there when Victor cut all his hair, and he heard Georgi murmuring, "You don't have to do this, Vitya, you don't. Your hair doesn't make you special, and it doesn't make you beautiful. You already are. You always will be." 

He's never going to forget that night, he can't let himself forget.

Yuri's learned a bit about cries for help in the last year. And he understands better now why Georgi didn't try harder to stop him. Why he'd taken the scissors Victor had handed him, instead of making him cut it himself. 

On the ice, he can see the way Victor tilts his head, watching Chris through silver lashes. And when he smiles, something fractures in Yuri's chest, like a fault line, compromised and sharp.

He doesn't wait to see Christophe kiss him. Or whatever happens next.

Giacometti might be an idiot-- he's temporary, tomorrow he'll be on a flight back to Switzerland-- but he won't let anything happen to Victor. He can spin him around the ice, elegant individually but clumsy as a pair, and he can make him laugh. 

For now, that's more than Yuri can do.

**...**

If there is one absolute in the world, it's that Aeroflot will find a way to make things complicated. Slow. They reroute flights, and times; and no matter how often Victor has left the country, (and it's been many,) it always feels like they're reluctant to let him come home. 

Sometimes he feels like he's left pieces of himself in airports all over the world, tucked in take-one-leave-one paperbacks and between the uncomfortable chairs.

Today is another priceless example, but Victor is just grateful to be on a flight at all, instead of spending any more time rattling around the Moscow Airport.

They've been back in Russia for hours, but they're still far from St. Petersburg, and after a bumpy trans-atlantic flight the only thing Victor really wants to do is collapse into his own bed. Nobody is happy as they're shuffled onto the small, two engine plane; it's old, and cramped, but it's going to get them home. And right now, that's the only thing that really matters.

Georgi takes the aisle, and Yuri collapses into the middle, his hood pulled up over his eyes-- still pretending he'll be able to sleep, even with the drone of the jet engines just outside the window. Victor takes the window, because he just happened to be the first onto the plane, talking to Yakov, but it's passed midnight in Russia, and there's nothing to see.

Victor envies the way Yuri can fold himself into the small space between the arm rests, feet pulled up and knees to his chest. He steals Victor's arm as a pillow; and it's become habit, comfortable, a grounding weight against his side. He's flexible, but it's been years since he was small enough to contort his body into a shape like that. So Victor slouches into his own seat and stills. 

Victor closes his eyes as the plane taxies down the runway, half aware of the low lurch in his stomach when they leave the ground. 

They're halfway over Vyshny Volochyok when the flight attendant lowers the cabin lights, leaving only the tiny illuminated dots along the aisle. And Victor isn't asleep, but he'd like to be, when Georgi reaches across Yuri's slumped body to prod Victor's shoulder.

Victor's fairly sure there should be rules against poking someone on a night like this, but he opens his eyes anyway. 

"Look, outside. That's why she turned off the lights." Georgi prompts under his breath, even though it was the middle of the night, and --

" _ Oh _ ..." Victor's breath fogs up the glass for an instant, and he has to wipe it away with the edge of his sleeve. There's no light pollution up this high, just the tiny plane and the slow curvature of the Earth descending towards the horizons, invisible in the dark. 

And there's light.

Brilliant, luminously green light, streaked across the sky. It dances, as though it were alive; swirling bright, and turning a pale purple at the edges. 

They're flying through the aurora, and Victor only takes his eyes away long enough to shake Yuri's shoulder. 

He'll want to see this. 

Victor's right. And Yuri's hands are warm and heavy on his thigh as he leans across Victor's body-- half crawling into his lap-- to see the lights outside the window. He's still soft and half asleep, and Victor can see the green lights reflecting in his wide eyes.

They never last long, the aurora is forever fleeting; but Yuri watches the lights, and Victor watches Yuri. He loves his uncomplicated smile, and it reminds him that this is all new to Yuri. It's still special.

Victor can't change time, but for a moment, he can feel Yuri's echoed joy. 

When the lights have faded behind them, Yuri tucks his head back against Victor's shoulder, and watches the lazy slide of the stars around them. 

**...**

They both leave the rink late, because sometimes Yakov forgets to shoo them off the ice before he leaves, and Victor knows where he hides the spare keys in his desk. They're both tired, exhausted down to the marrow of their bones-- but Victor is smiling, and Yuri is brimming over with excitement that lightens the lead in his feet.

He's perfected his triple, and he knows he can do more. Do better. This is just a stepping stone to a quad, and he's just not going to tell Yakov because he already knows what he'll say.

_ Not yet. You're too young. Stop being so reckless! _

What Yakov doesn't know won't hurt him. And Victor has chosen to keep his mouth shut.

Winter in Russia means leaving the cold rink for the colder streets, and their voices are muffled behind thick scarves. Yuri's used to be Victor's, once upon a time; but it migrated into Yuri's skate bag sometime in the last year, and Victor has so many that he doesn't care to get it back.

And he likes the way Yuri wraps the thick cashmere around and around his head, until even his ears are half covered.

Yuri likes the way it smells of him, like juniper and herbs, even though the scent is starting to fade.

On nights like this, they stop at the shop on the corner to warm their fingers, and Victor always buys  _ sosiska v teste _ for them to eat on the way home. The pastry wrapped sausage is piping hot, and they have to take off their gloves to eat them.

They aren't supposed to-- they're professional athletes, with carefully defined diets. 

Yuri never pays attention to his, but he's young and between his training and his metabolism, there's never a spare scrap of anything on him.

Victor does follow his. He's not a teenager anymore, and there are so many other skaters waiting in the wings to knock him from his podium. 

But he makes exceptions for Yuri, both of them licking the hot drippings from their fingers. 

They don't talk much on nights like this, the silence broken by the steady crunch of their feet on the icy pavement.

The snow is deep and muffling; gathering at the curbs and making the sidewalks look wider, waiting for unwary feet to tumble off the side. So they walk close to the buildings, away from the wind.

These winter nights are dark, and the sky is picked out with a million pinpoint lights. It might snow later, but for now? The world is quiet. And the blocks between the rink and the dormitories-- where Yuri's lives, and once upon a time, Victor did, too-- feel empty and abandoned. Like they're the only people in the city.

These are the nights they both like best.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Japan feels like another planet, something far flung and removed from his home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It feels like we've been through a lot to get here, but we've finally caught up to canon!
> 
> I won't be re-writing the whole events of canon, because lets face it, we already know what happens! So just assume that, unless otherwise stated, events during canon happen like they did on screen.

**[ nineteen . ]**

Victor is twenty-seven, and the snow in Hasetsu is wrong.

It's wet here, with a cold that lingers on his skin and settles heavily on his clothes, saturating them. The air feels damp and thick, and he supposes it might be because it's supposed to be spring here-- not snowing at all. Not like it was when he left Russia.

Japan feels like another planet, something far flung and removed from his home. The skies get dark at night, instead of stretching on forever in that strange milky twilight he's come to love. 

He doesn't speak the language, and he doesn't know their customs. But Victor has always been good at remaking himself into something new, and surely this is no different. 

Staying in Russia had become unbearable. Impossible. So Victor had caught the first flight to the other side of the world.

He's rushing into this headlong, and part of Victor knows it's reckless. That he's throwing away everything he's spent his life working for. But the walls in St. Petersburg were closing in on him, threatening to collapse and bury him alive. 

He hadn't thought. Hadn't planned. He'd thrown everything into boxes and fled in the night without a goodbye.

He regrets that part.

Of course, Yuuri is acting very strangely. But Victor knows better than to judge people by the things they do when they've had too much to drink. He's been there himself, often enough that he has no place to be throwing stones. And maybe they just have to get to know one another a little better.

It's only been a few days, and neither of them is really sure what they're looking for. So they focus on the basics-- lose the weight, get back on the ice, see if their motivation has survived the winter of their depression.

Still, sometimes Yuuri doesn't seem to understand why he's here. As though he wasn't the one who invited him. 

Nothing makes sense, and after a few days, Victor can't blame it on jet lag or surprise anymore. He did descend on the onsen without a word, but if Yuuri didn't want him here?

Victor doesn't want to consider that. 

And he's here now, and determined to make the best of it. Yuuri has potential, even if he can't see it himself anymore. 

Control is an act of will. And between them, Victor's fairly sure they can will some confidence into Yuuri Katsuki.

**...**

"Hey Victor, you got time for a little chat!?"

Yuri is fifteen, and he's not sure he's ever been more angry in his life. Of all the stupid,  _ stupid _ things Victor could have done-- running off to Japan was so incredibly  _ dumb _ that Yuri couldn't wrap his head around it.

If he was looking for someone to train, why this pig? Katsuki was disgusting; a whimpering, sobbing mess of a man. And there are so many people back in Russia that would give anything for Victor to coach them!

Yuri wasn't one of them. Not entirely. Not  _ technically _ . But there's an endless list of hopefuls and potentials... But apparently Victor is an idiot, and happy to abandon them all.

It wasn't fair, none of it was fair.

Most of the time Yuri doesn't dwell on the fairness of things. Life isn't fair. Life sucks, he's a teenager and he knows all about that. You just have to try and make the best of a shitty situation. But Victor is supposed to be better than that. 

He was supposed to remember Yuri. And his promise. 

Yuri was supposed to be special. How could he have forgotten about him? 

_ Idiot _ .

It makes him feel brittle and fractious; like he's beating himself against the world, but he's the one starting to crack.

He can't be sure Victor's alright if he's living in Japan, and his senior debut program is the perfect excuse.

Alright, he's a bit angry about it. More than a bit. This isn't just Victor's career that he's tearing down, it's Yuri's as well, and that's not allowed. He's worked too long, and too hard, to fail now.

But mostly he's worried, because Victor can be a flake sometimes-- but not like this. 

This is different. 

And he doesn't trust this other Yuuri to take care of Victor. He can't even take care of himself. 

He's a fan. Another idiot that will never see how much Victor is giving up for him. To him. And someone has to stop Victor from breaking himself. 

Victor is worth more than his component parts, but nobody else seems to see it.

So Yuri's not leaving, no matter how loudly Yakov yells. 

That night, Yuri sits on the end of Victor's bed after the rest of Yu-topia is asleep, drumming his fingers restlessly, angrily, on the edge of the mattress. "I don't get it. How could you just forget?"

He sounds exasperated and tired, running on adrenaline fumes and jet lag, and the energy drink that's long since worn off.

Victor isn't sure why he holds out the side of his blanket, because Yuri isn't a child anymore, not really. And it's been ages since Yuri was young enough to come to him for comfort. But he doesn't have anything else to offer, and he'd never thought he'd miss the sound of his own language after just a few days. 

Yuri thinks it surprises both of them when he kicks off the slippers the Katsuki family had given him, and crawls under the comforter. 

"Just because I forgot my promise, doesn't mean I forgot you. You know what I'm like!" Victor laughs, his voice pitched low and quiet so he doesn't disturb anyone. It's a good act, but Yuri's always been able to see through it. He's not happy here, not like he'd desperately hoped he would be.

The demons have followed him, and there's no Yuri in Japan. 

No Georgi. No Yakov with his familiar, abrasive care. 

People idolize him here. They've read his magazine articles and committed them to memory. They know his routines, and Katsuki even does a decent imitation of some of them. Simplified. 

"I couldn't forget you, Yura."

Walls in Russia are wood and cement, solid things meant to keep out the world, and the winter. The walls at Yu-topia are rice paper, and screens, and they only strain the sound a little.

Yuri isn't sure if he forgives him (he doesn't think so. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Maybe he'll wait until after Yakov has forgiven him for leaving, too). Instead, he drives his cold toes into the warm space between Victor's ankles, and takes a mean delight in the way he shivers.

"The Russian ice fairy strikes again! I should make you wear socks to bed." This time, Victor's laugh is a little more real, half muffled in his pillow. 

"Shut up, old man, go to sleep. Your room is more comfortable than that  _ closet _ they gave me."

The futon was never intended to hold a large dog, a grown man, and a teenager. But it's warm under the blanket, and it's been such a long day. Yuri doesn't try to stifle his yawn, and with his head tucked beside Victor's on the pillow (this is his territory, he claimed it before Yuuri had come to ruin everything) sleep comes easily.

Victor suspects he knows why Yuri is really there, neither of them is mysterious to each other. Not really. Not anymore. Maybe never. 

And Yuri is demanding, propelled forward by fire and annoyance, and teenage frustration.

But Victor remembers being sixteen. And Robbie Miralles.

Yuri is beautiful, smart-- he's lightening, blazing through the world, and he won't stop until he gets what he wants. But he's young, so young. Unfinished, still evolving into the man he will be. 

Victor is twenty-seven, and age has given him perspective. He won't make Robbie's mistakes, and the thought of hurting Yuri like that makes him sick to his stomach. It churns acidly, and he can taste the bile at the back of his throat. 

Yuri's not a little boy anymore, but he's years away from being an adult.

Victor knows what it's like to feel wrong in your own body, like your flesh doesn't fit anymore. He's stood under the shower and scrubbed himself raw, but the feeling of being dirty on the inside remains. 

He's alone, because it's better for everyone. He shouldn't love the way Yuri flops against his chest in sleep, arms finding home around Victor's waist like he's been transformed into a teddy bear. He shouldn't rest his cheek against the top of his golden head, and breath in the smell in the smell of soap, or the sweat and sulfur from the springs underneath it.

And it shouldn't feel like Yuri's weight on the other side of the bed is the only thing that makes sense. 

He's crossed the world to find his new incarnation, and Yuri hasn't let him escape.

Victor was the best skater in the world, better than Robbie had ever been, but it's never healed anything.

He is not that man. 

He loves Yuri, maybe he always has. It was easier when he was younger, a child; someone with questions Victor had answers to. 

Yuri has always looked too closely, and seen too much; he demands with his eyes, and Victor wants to tell him to go back to Russia. 

Yuri's breath is hot and sticky on Victor's cheek where he's pressed in close, fast asleep. And Victor knows he's going to stay in Hasetsu, because it's better that way. For both of them. 

Because this is wrong. He knows it's wrong. And he can't control the way he feels, but he can choose how he reacts to it. 

He can choose to put thousands of miles, and resentments, and broken promises between them. Yuri is young, he'll find someone else. Someone better. Someone who hasn't been made and remade so many times that they've forgotten who they are. 

And Victor will be happy for him.

Victor falls asleep in the small hours of the morning, his back hunched under the blanket and turned away from Yuri. Even in sleep he's hiding from the light that's started to seep in through the window, gilding the edges of the world in a faded grey glow. 

Yuri is disoriented when he awakes, reaching blindly for the edge of the blanket and encountering the warm body beside him instead. The solid plane of Victor's shoulder feels like a brand under his fingers, jolting awareness up his arm. 

And suddenly he's awake, too awake for a body that's lagging six hours behind, and should still be asleep.

But Yuri's never slept well in strange places, and he can hear the faint stirrings of Hasetsu beyond the bedroom walls. 

He isn't a child anymore, and these days Yuri understands better why the sight of Victor's mouth-- slack and sleep soft, parted just enough for him to see the flash of red inside when he sighs-- makes his blood run quicker, hotter, and more insistent in his veins. 

He knows what he wants, but that hasn't changed since he was eleven, and Victor first let him crawl into his bed. The wanting has only matured with him, settling with a dark, throbbing heat between his thighs. 

It was innocent once, for both of them. Happy in each other's company, and the simple presence of another person in their life. But it's changing, shifting, and they're both uncertain on this new foundation of sand.

Yuri loves this side of Victor, the side that only he gets to see.

Because the media might think he's flitting from one bed to another, and another, and another. Trailed by a series of nameless, faceless lovers they've never been able to find. Victor is a flirt, but it's all for the cameras. Yuri knows how hard he works, how many hours he spends on the ice, until his feet are bruised and bloody.

None of them have time to leave a string of broken hearted lovers behind. 

In the half light, Yuri traces the long lines of Victor's body with his eyes. The faded shadows that pool in the hollow between his shoulder blades, and the downy softness at the nape of his neck where pale skin is covered by paler hair. 

And Yuri can understand why Georgi grieves for Anya. 

He's never had Victor, not really. He can look, but he can never touch. And there's a maddening comfort in that-- you can't miss what you've never had. 

But he can burn for it. 

Yuri is fifteen, hormones and touch-starved loneliness colliding in his blood and forging supernovas in his brain. He's hot and sticky under his pajamas, fabric clinging to his skin, and Yuri feels like his chest is collapsing with the effort of breathing quietly. 

The world has condensed down to grey light, the scent of Victor's shampoo in the sheets, and Yuri is drowning in the man beside him-- too afraid, cautious, afraid, wise, fucking tormented by the fact that he doesn't know which. 

It's indulgent to lie there, hard against his belly, brain sparking with the voyeuristic thrill of being here. 

He wants to strip away the blankets; to flatten his hands over the planes of Victor's shoulders, and to dig his fingertips into the cut crease between his hips, just to see if he can make him moan. 

Victor's never been shy with his body, desensitized by years of locker room showers and tight-fitting skate costumes. Yuri knows what he looks like bare, skin flushed, and it's been a favourite fantasy for a few years now. 

Ever since he learned how pleasant his alone time can be.

Yuri is fairly sure he's damning himself, but he's never believed in Hell. His fantasies are safe in the vault of his mind, and he's already ruled (to himself, because those are the only rules he cares to follow) that he'll never touch.

So he curls his hands into fists, and balls them up under the pillow. 

In the morning they won't talk about any of it, not a word. They'll tell themselves that it was just a way to stay warm.

It had nothing to do with wanting to be close to another person. They're both fine, perfect. Not floundering and lost in a strange country where they don't speak the language.

And they certainly weren't comforted by each other's touch.

Of course not.

That would be a very bad thing.

**...**

Victor is smarter than people think. 

He's aware of his shortcomings and his failures. He knows when he's lying to himself, and to the world, even though he doesn't usually indulge in self reflection. It's not comfortable, and it doesn't make anything better.

Because people don't care about his mind. They want to be surprised. They care about how perfectly he can land a jump, and how brightly he can smile for the camera. It's hateful, but they haven't cared since he was fifteen, and crashing into the senior division too young.

Yuuri doesn't care.

He pretends to.  _ He wants to _ . He wants to know Victor like he can win him. A trivia game with a high score. And Victor's seen the posters half hidden under the edge of the bed, but he doesn't comment on them, because why?

Maybe this is what he's supposed to transform himself into this time. 

So he asks Yuuri what he wants him to be. Victor doesn't trust his own judgement. His mind always turns back to Yuri, leaving Japan without saying goodbye. 

He doesn't have a good answer. And Victor wonders if maybe it doesn't exist.

**...**

Victor knows he shouldn't take Yakov's words to heart. 

It isn't as though any of it came as a surprise; Yakov has always had a temper, and Victor has chosen to up and leave Russia with barely a backwards glance. Yakov had plans for this year-- and Victor had known that when he'd packed his bags, and when his coach... Former coach... 

When Yakov. His  _ family _ . Had followed him to the airport.

_ "Go away, watching you play pretend coach makes me sick to my stomach." _

No, none of his words had come as a surprise. But they still hurt. Yakov knows how to make them hurt.

He knows how to find the faults in his armor, the fragile pieces that have been repaired and repaired over the years. Shored up with desperate smiles and denial-- because if his reflection doesn't look sad, and the rest of the world thinks everything is wonderful, maybe it would become true.

Victor hasn't checked his phone since he and Yuuri returned to their room. After liquor comes regret, and he isn't interested in facing that until after his stomach has stopped threatening to expel everything he's eaten. It always seems like such a good idea, at the time. But he's never been very good at drowning his hurt in just one drink.

"I can't believe you did that..." Yuuri mutters under his breath, his face illuminated by the screen, because he isn't avoiding his phone.

He, Victor noticed, hadn't hesitated for a moment. The carnage and hilarity of their evening (and whoever created social media had a lot to answer for) has been posted, and while Victor doesn't care?

He pretends to, of course. Shakes his head and tries to look contrite. Yuuri is so damn worried about how this will reflect on him. As if he's never tried to drown his demons!  _ Hypocrite _ .

A dozen glasses of champagne spoke volumes about Yuuri's self control.

Victor doesn't say it aloud. He's been in the public eye too long not to know when to bite his tongue. 

Instead, Victor slouches down into the thin, not particularly comfortable bed, and closes his eyes. It makes the world stop spinning, sick and lopsided on its axis. It doesn't seem fair that Yuuri is blaming him... 

But he doesn't know why Victor is upset. Hasn't asked. He doesn't understand Yakov, or how he's been looking out for Victor since he came to St. Petersburg. A surrogate father, because ten-year-olds can't always fend for themselves.

And finally, with a sigh dredged up from the depths of his chest, Victor fell asleep.

He doesn't hear the sound of Georgi tapping on their hotel door.

And he doesn't hear Yuuri's low, clipped, "What are you doing here?" Or see the way he plants his hand on the doorframe like a sentry. "Victor's sleeping, my coach needs his rest. And I'm not letting you in to cause trouble. Just go away."

The next day when Victor finally checks his phone, he wonders for a moment why Georgi sent him a text instead of coming to see him.

Victor is twenty-seven, and so is Georgi. And they've been friends for seventeen years. They know each other better than anyone, and maybe this is the final straw? Maybe leaving Russia was the thing Georgi couldn't forgive?

>> _ Don't let Yakov hurt you. He's just angry, you know what he's like.  _ _   
_ >> _ We all miss you, Vitya.  _

Maybe not.

<< _ I heard about Anya, I'm sorry. _ _   
_ << _ Good luck today. _

The sky over China looks the same as it always does through the hotel window, and Victor can hear the sound of running water from the bathroom. 

Maybe Yakov was right, maybe he was just a selfish man.

After all, at least Georgi sent him a message to make sure he was alright, even if he didn't show up in person. Victor had barely done that when he'd heard about Anya. 

<< _ I miss you, too. _


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marriage is forever, till death do them part.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! I was deliberating about splitting this chapter into two, but it's Friday, and we could all use a little escapism! I hope everyone's having a good week (whenever you read this!) and on to the victurio! ❤️

**[ twenty . ]**

Victor is almost twenty-eight, and he has a ring on his right hand that catches the light whenever he looks at it.

It feels like a brand. A stone around his neck. A _Property of Yuuri Katsuki_ sign in solid gold, so the whole world knows where he belongs. 

They're smiling for the cameras, and for their friends. It's a performance, remaking himself into the future husband of Yuuri Katsuki.

Marriage is forever, till death do them part. It's telling the world that this is the man he wants to be with for the rest of his life, that he wants to build that life with. Victor knows he should be happy, because Yuuri's a good man.

Sometimes they even understand each other; though that's usually when they're on the ice, and they don't have to talk about anything but work. Victor keeps himself busy, which isn't a challenge, because he's coaching Yuuri and training for his own final season, and if he'd thought his life before was hard?

It's exhausting. So he picks his battles, and his relationship with Yuuri isn't one of them. 

He lets things slide, because there are never enough hours to deal with them all.

Victor pretends not to notice the sidelong glances from the other skaters, or the faint crease between Christophe's brows when he catches his eye. 

Yuri looks like he's going to be sick when he looks at it, and Victor can't forget the look on his face when they announced their engagement. 

That, in retrospect, had been a mistake. A failed and desperate attempt to control the narrative.

Georgi meets someone, a new-old face, and when he talks about Otabek his whole being lights up. 

Victor's happy for him, for them both. But he suspects he doesn't look like that when he talks about Yuuri. 

And what does that mean?

**...**

Yuri is sixteen, and his body is betraying him.

He's always known this was going to happen eventually, it's been lurking just beyond his perception for over a year now. And he's been ignoring it because there's nothing he can do to stop it. Time and biology are fixed and inevitable, no matter how much he wishes he could skip this phase entirely.

But now the creeping growing pains have become something else, something malignant that makes his bones ache. It throbs through the long bones of his shins, and burns in the hollows of his knees. It's hateful and Yuri is crawling out of his skin.

This new body swings wildly from aching to aroused, sometimes at all at once. It's driving him crazy because has work to do, endless hours on the ice. 

And there's nothing more fucking distracting than trying to land a quad without breaking his neck because he doesn't want the whole rink to see that he's suddenly, inconveniently, and impossibly hard.

Sixteen feels like his body is staging a revolt. A civil war. And Yuri is losing.

The bottle of Nurofen in his skating bag depletes faster than before; because Yakov won't let him have anything stronger, and Yuri is popping them like candies when he isn't looking.

It's part of being sixteen, and Yuri knows he isn't the first man in the world to suffer through this. His grandpa is tall, and there are photos of his father on the mantle back in Moscow that show his father at his age. A skinny, short thing, until adolescence came with a vengeance and he grew eight inches in a year.

He's never met his father, he died when Yuri was only a few days old. But this legacy of growing pains and awkwardness, his limbs suddenly too long and gangly, makes Yuri furious. 

"It doesn't last forever." 

Victor's voice is more amused than sympathetic-- there's no pity there, and it's a good thing, because Yuri would have to throw something at him if there was. And currently the only thing easily at hand is one of his skates.

Throwing that at Victor might be a bit excessive. Maybe. But only because he's displaying a rare show of wisdom, and hiding that stupid grin of his.

"But the changes are _permanent_. I'm going to be stuck like this!"

The locker clangs loudly, and there's nothing soft in the changeroom to muffle the sound. So it echoes around and around the room, reverberating off the slick, tiled walls. And Victor doesn't comment, because Yuri isn't the first person to feel betrayed by their changing body.

He'd been sixteen once, too, trying to settle into an uncomfortable skin that didn't feel like his own. And it was roulette, they both knew that; there was no promise that Yuri's famed flexibility would survive the tectonic shifts in his body. The resettling of his bones in their new configuration.

Victor doubted it would. Not entirely, not with the same willowy grace he had now. 

There was a reason you didn't see Biellmann spins in men's senior figure skating. That was the trade of age, flexibility for strength. 

But he didn't think Yuri needed him to remind him of that, the evidence was right in front of him. He and Georgi had gone through the same unwanted chrysalis, and come out different. 

Yuri's training was being plagued by limbs that seemed too long-- longer than they'd been the day before, and muscles that strained and pulled at these new bones. It wasn't hopeless, but there was a certain amount of biological inevitability about it all.

"I looked like a skeleton under my clothes." Victor added, chuckling under his breath, "I was hungry all the time... Georgi, too! And he's just a little taller than me."

"What did you do to make it stop?" Yuri's voice cracked, demanding. At least the dropping, breaking, pitching voice had finally evened out before he turned fifteen. That had been more than bad enough, and Mila, that old hag, hadn't let him hear the end of it.

He didn't sound like a child anymore, and now the rest of his body was rushing to catch up.

Victor's shoulders raised and dropped in a half shrug, "You can't. You just have to wait it out. Keep moving so you retain as much flexibility as you can." It wasn't good advice, mostly because it wasn't anything Yuri didn't already know.

But it was all he had. 

Yuri really was going to throw his skate at him.

"What kind of help is that?! I can't just keep moving until this is over!"

"You want help? Sit down." 

Yuri's teeth clattered as Victor took him by the shoulders and pushed him down unceremoniously on the long bench that ran the length of the locker room. "Hey! I can do it myself, I don't need you manhandling me!"

Victor only laughed, and Yuri wondered just how pissed Yakov would be if he stabbed his prize skater. At least they were in the locker room; he could rinse all the blood down the drains. 

"Would you relax? No wonder you're sore, you feel like one big knot!"

Victor's hands were occult, impossible, his thumbs working into the hollows of Yuri's shoulder blades in search of trigger points. 

It hurt, each point flaring with a burning pain under his skin, and Yuri's throat caught with a sigh. He could feel his blood rushing under the surface, pooling in the places where he'd been tense before. It was feverish, and his temples throbbed--

And Yuri bit his tongue to stifle a groan, but it escaped with a breathy huff anyway.

His shoulders were loosening and hanging limp, taking the weight off the side he'd been favouring since he'd fallen a few days earlier. Victor wasn't gentle, he didn't treat him like glass; and it was working.

His hands moved down his back, and Yuri's old t-shirt-- a relic of faded tiger print and torn hems-- did nothing to hide the electricity of Victor's hands sliding over his body. It was too thin, worn through in all the wrong places, and it didn't usually matter because it wasn't like he was wearing it in public.

It was more like a good luck charm, though Yuri wasn't sure if this was luck, or a slow descent into madness.

"Fuck, fuck... _fuck_..." Cursing under his breath, Yuri fumbled for his hoodie and balled it up in his lap; aiming for casual, and falling humiliatingly short. His body is staging an offensive, and Yuri tries to clear his mind, because he doesn't want to fantasize enough rope to hang himself.

Not when Victor can probably hear the heavy thud of his heart. Bastard.

Victor laughs behind him, so quiet it was almost inaudible, but he doesn't say anything except, "Swing your feet up onto the bench and I'll do your legs before I go."

Yuri's cheeks are burning, and he's still trying to find the words to tell Victor to screw off, leave him alone-- when he did exactly as he was told. The bench is solid, and smells of cedar, like the sauna; a hard, flat plane beneath his knotted stomach. 

Yuri is going to die here, he knows it. If not because all his blood is rushing south, than from embarrassment, because this is wonderful. And intolerable. 

He's going to need a cold shower when Victor leaves because there was no way he's going to make it back to Lilia's like this. And no wonder he can't think, he has no blood left to fuel his brain; it's all joined the steady drum of his pulse between his thighs.

With his head hanging over the edge of the bench, Yuri can only see the scuffed blue and grey tiled floor, and the occasional pass of Victor's shoes as he walks around him. It's boring, not distracting at all, so he closes his eyes and focuses on Victor's hands alone.

As everything clarifies, he thinks that might have been a mistake.

From his vantage point he can't see the flush on Victor's skin, or the way his teeth have closed over his lower lip. 

Victor isn't sure if this is wrong, because it's a strange grey area. The ice takes its toll on their bodies, and he and Georgi have done this for each other dozens of times. It's just something they do, because they know their bodies better than the sports therapist that occasionally comes to visit.

They watch each other stumble, and fall, and they know how it hurts. Where it hurts. The therapist only has his charts and a university degree on his office wall. He's never put his hand out to catch himself, still spinning from the momentum of a botched quad landing, or pushed too far, _too far_ , and felt something release that shouldn't.

Yuri is younger, so much younger, but he doesn't feel like a child under Victor's hands. He feels strong, and lean, and his skin is so pale that Victor can see the traces of blue veins beneath the surface. It pinks under the pressure of his fingers, like a flushed map of everywhere Victor has touched him.

Yuri is growing in leaps, more every day. He's sharp tongued, made of salt and fire, and the world loves him for it.

Victor loves him for it, even when he worries that Yuri is going to burn himself one day. One last victim to the eternal flame that is Yuri Plisetsky.

He won't let that happen, not if there's anything he can do to save him. Victor doesn't think there is, but that won't stop him from trying. 

Yuri is important, a fulcrum in his life that everything has started to shift everything. Victor loves him-- that part is easy. It's the specifics that are giving him trouble; because he doesn't love Yuri like a brother, or a friend. Yuri is Yuri, defining all other definition:

Currently, that logic is serving as a shield. Something to stop Victor from looking too closely at what might be behind it. 

Victor is with Yuuri-- and he shouldn't be feeling this way about someone he met when they were ten, and he was twenty-two. It's wrong. Dangerously wrong. Yuri might be old enough to feel like an adult, old enough to satisfy the courts; but he's still so young. 

That's what it all comes down to, he thinks, smoothing his hands over the flat planes of Yuri's scapulae, and feeling the shiver that trickles between them.

This is wrong. 

But he loves the way Yuri arches into his hands, so responsive and wanting.

It's been such a long time since anyone wanted Victor. The real Victor, not the celluloid and airbrushed one.

Victor wants to kiss the nape of his neck, half hidden under a sweat damp fall of blonde hair. Or the small of his back, where his t-shirt has rucked up, and Victor can see his skin above his leggings. 

He's bruised in a dozen places, and this is the side of Yuri that his cat-eared fans will never get to see. They want the glitter, and the fantasy--

But it's not like that with Yuuri, right? Yuuri understands how much work goes into their performances, their perfection. He's not a fan, not in the same way. And that makes it alright. He has to believe that.

Yuri isn't even trying to be seductive, and Victor can feel his pulse tugging low in his belly. And this has to stop, because Victor is the adult here, and Yuri is making these small groans of pleasure that he isn't supposed to hear.

He has to get out of here before he says something... does something... very, very stupid.

"All done!" 

Yuri blinks, and watches Victor in confusion as he grabs his skate bag and leaves the locker room too quickly to be casual. He looks like he's running away, the main compartment on his bag still half open and the arms of his sweater hanging out. It doesn't make any sense!

"What the Hell...?"

Yuri isn't sure if he should feel slighted, or relieved. He doesn't try to stop Victor, but it's a narrow thing.

Five minutes later finds Yuri in the shower, one hand braced against the slick wall, and the other wrapped around his cock. He's tight and slippery under the water, and it's good-- but not as good as it would be with Victor there.

He finishes fast, to the image of Victor's hands roaming his body. 

It's not the first time, and it won't be the last.

**[ twenty-one . ]**

Victor is twenty-eight, and Yuri is sixteen, and they're at opposite sides of the tipping point. 

Most of the time they talk about skating, about their rinkmates, and their competitors. This will be the first, and the last time that their lives align like this; both of them training and fighting for the same gold. 

Yuri expected it to be uncomfortable, a fight to the death instead of a changing of the guard. His one chance to prove to the world that he was more than just the next Victor Nikiforov. He expected it to hurt, because nothing good in life ever comes easily. 

Victor had expected it to be exhausting, and in that, he'd been right. 

But neither of them expected to find Yuri draped across the couch in Victor's living room-- no, _Victor and Yuuri's_ \-- watching English movies with terrible Russian translations. Yuuri doesn't usually understand the jokes, but he's seen enough bad Japanese translations to understand the concept of cultural misunderstanding.

And how some things simply get lost in translation. 

They don't plan for Yuri to fall asleep there, his head propped against the arm of the couch, and his bare feet wedged into the warm space between Victor's thigh and the cushion. 

They don't plan for it to become a habit.

A new normal.

For Yuri to spend more nights on their couch than in his own bed. He claims his bed is uncomfortable, but makes no effort to fix it, even when the couch becomes too short for his newly lanky frame.

"I think he's working too hard." Yuuri says quietly, not wanting to disturb him. He's sitting in front of the couch, one knee drawn to his chest, enjoying the warm weight of Victor's hand on his shoulder. "Someone needs to tell him to slow down."

For a moment, Victor wants to explain to Yuuri how different things are in Russia. How the competition is different, and the expectations are higher; there's no place for slow, for careful, when you have a thousand other people waiting to eat you raw. 

He's been living here almost a year, but mostly their lives follow the circuit from home to the rink, and back again. Yuuri hasn't seen much of Russia, and he still judges everything with a very Japanese sensibility. 

Maybe that's a discussion for another day, he tells himself instead. There's no use worrying Yuuri any more than he already is.

So instead, Victor fishes the blanket from the back of the couch, and tucks it around Yuri's feet first, trapping the warmth against his bare toes. " _Da_... I will."

"When?"

"Tomorrow? Before practice."

He won't. Victor knows he won't.

But Yuuri smiles, faith restored, and kisses his cheek when he stands up to head to bed, "Good, he'll listen to you. Are you coming?"

Victor's fingers linger for a moment over the delicate bones of Yuri's ankle, feeling the sleeping warmth of him radiating through the blanket. Talking to him wouldn't change anything; Yuri is too much like him, too driven. 

Yuuri assumes he can't see the risks he's taking.

Victor knows better. Yuri knows. He's just decided that his blood and bones are a fair sacrifice for being the best.

"Yeah, ok. This movie is terrible, anyway."

Yuri is so tired that he barely stirs when Victor tucks the rest of the heavy down comforter around him. Winter has come again, and there's something small and burning in his chest when he looks down at Yuri. An ember that's refused to die. 

He doesn't whisper _good night,_ or kiss his forehead. But he does shut off the living room lights, and closes the curtains, even though dawn comes late in the winter.

"Do you think it's strange how much time he spends here? He should have friends his own age." 

Yuuri is kind enough to wait until he's closed the bedroom door before he asks, but the burning pinpoint in Victor's chest-- coal bright and sharp-- scalds anyway. "He doesn't have anything in common with them."

"You shouldn't be encouraging this, it isn't healthy. He's sixteen, he should be able to have fun like a teenager."

As if Yuri knows anything about being a normal teenager! As if either of them did. 

Victor's half finished unbuttoning his shirt when he looks over his shoulder, pushing something stubborn and defensive under a confusion he doesn't really feel. He doesn't know what healthy is, as defined by Yuuri Katsuki.

Is it flying halfway around the world to meet a man he'd barely met?

No, probably not.

But Victor thinks it probably isn't the way Yuuri grows sullen and tense whenever Chris calls, either. He doesn't call anymore, not as often. 

Or how Yuuri holds his hand more tightly in public than he does in private. 

Healthy probably isn't Yuuri moving to Russia, and relying on Victor to translate everything. _This is temporary_. It feels temporary. 

Victor isn't sure if he means his engagement with Yuuri. Or the life he's building here.

"He feels safe with us."

And Victor could tell him about the nights Yuri fell asleep against his side, his head pillowed in Victor's lap. How growing up in the novostroika apartments in Moscow can be both home, and the one place you want to escape more than anything.

How precious it is that Yuri feels safe enough here to sleep so deeply.

But those aren't his stories to tell. And Victor doesn't think he could ever find the words to make Yuuri understand; their worlds are just too different. 

"The rink will be closed over New Years, I thought maybe we could visit my parents." Victor says instead, finishing his buttons, "You should meet them."

He can't picture Yuuri sitting in his mother's kitchen.

They don't leave the city.

**...**

Summer has finally returned to St. Petersburg, and even Yuuri has to admit that the strange twilight sky is beautiful.

The city seems to come alive during the White Nights, like an annual reminder of why Victor doesn't want to live anywhere else. Why he's willing to put up with the Federation, and the cold, and the long months of winter darkness. 

"Victor, what are we watching?" 

Yuuri is sitting upright on the blanket they've unfolded in the middle of the park, in good view of the open air stage. It feels like half the city has had the same idea, and the vast, empty space is quickly filling with a patchwork of blankets and people; all fringed by food sellers taking advantage of the late night performance.

The program for tonight is in Russian, of course, and Victor leans against Yuuri's side, skimming the tip of his finger along the rows of brightly coloured Cyrllic script. "First is bits from Swan Lake, and Romeo and Juliet--"

"Disgusting!" Yuri pipes up from his other side, grinning at the way Yuuri rolls his eyes, "Ballet is all depressing, why do I let you drag me to these things, old man?"

"I wouldn't say that so loudly, Lilia might hear you." 

"Shut up, she won't! She's back home." Which she is, but Yuri glances over his shoulder just to be sure. You can never be too careful when it comes to invoking the name of Lilia Baranovskaya. Especially when it involves the ballet!

It's a beautiful performance, but Yuuri finds himself watching Yuri and Victor more than the stage. Outwardly they look normal, just like everyone else in the park. They're sprawled on the blanket, hip to hip, and shoulder to shoulder; because it's the only way the three of them can all fit comfortably. 

From the corner of his eye, Yuuri watches as Victor breaks a tiny piece off the chocolate bar they're sharing. They shouldn't be, but it's such a lovely night, perfectly made for breaking diets. Yuuri declines when they offer it to him, because he'd never learned to appreciate the strange Alyonka bars, with their baby faced wrapping and creamy, crumbly texture. 

None of them are poor, and Victor is properly wealthy; the result of years of gold medal prizes. But when Yuuri asks why he doesn't buy better sweets, Victor just laughs. 

It's nostalgia, and culture; the same way he puts raspberry jam in his tea, and drinks instant coffee, even though he has a perfectly good espresso maker in the kitchen. 

And Yuuri supposes he doesn't have to understand, but he won't eat it himself. If he's going to crash his diet, it's going to be for something more appealing than this.

He's still watching them when Victor shrugs off his light jacket and drapes it over Yuri's shoulders. They're always busy during the day, working so hard. Because this is Victor's last year, and the last chance that Yuuri and Yuri will ever have to compete against him. 

They're bringing their best, so it's not too surprising that Yuri's blonde head is pillowed on his crossed arms, his breathing slow and shallow with sleep.

Yuri feels like he has so much to prove, and it's exhausting.

He snuggles into the coat, face buried in the wool, and Yuuri can't explain the twinge of something hurt and jealous behind his ribs. 

"Victor, do you think we can get tickets for the performance at the Mariinsky you were talking about? Maybe for Thursday?" Yuuri reaches for his hand and threads their fingers together, enjoying the way their gold rings catch the twilight colours of the sky. 

He doesn't need to worry, Victor is his. They're going to be married, and everything is going to be wonderful.

They just have to spend more time alone together, and Yuri always has dinner with Lilia on Thursdays. 

_Perfect_. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a year they've orbited each other, their scores too close for anyone -- including them, though Victor has always suspected -- to be entirely sure who would take the final gold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before we get into the chapter, I wanted to say thank you to all the people that have taken the time to comment or kudos this fic. You're all so amazingly supportive, and it's made writing this fic, and having the chance to chat with you is absolutely wonderful! ❤️

**[ twenty-two . ]**

Victor is twenty-nine, and Yuri is seventeen, and they will never be in this moment again.

The arena lights are blinding, they've always been blinding, no matter how many times they've stood under them. But Victor can see the way Yuri's fingers clutch and cramp around his gold medal, pressing it hard to his chest. 

In a moment they'll both skate back to the boards, and the world will start turning once more. 

For a year they've orbited each other, their scores too close for anyone -- including them, though Victor has always suspected -- to be entirely sure who would take the final gold.

There's no shame in silver. And if he had to lose to anyone in the end, Victor is glad it was Yuri.

It feels right, somehow. Like the pieces of his new life are starting to fall into place.

It didn't feel this way before, fleeing to Japan. Desperate to outrun his demons, and his age. And of all the medals he's won in his long career, the silver in his hand might be the most important.

They're nearly the same height these days. It's strange, but Yuri is growing into his new skin, and sometimes Victor forgets that he used to be so much smaller. He's never seemed small, even when Victor could look over the top of his head. 

The fans won't be calling Yuri a fairy for much longer. He's moving through this chrysalis stage, shedding pieces to become something new. Something more beautiful. 

Beneath the flood lights, his hair is as gold at the medal peeking between his fingers. He's one step up on the riser, smiling tensely and Victor can't take his eyes off him. 

This is the future of figure skating in Russia. Yuri Plisetsky, just like Victor, guessed when he was very young.

The world has paused for just a few seconds. Crystallized and clear. 

Even the audience, cheering and deafening in the stands, seem like little more than background noise. He'll never be here again, not like this. He'll never stand before the crowd, cold metal against his chest, and his heart in his throat.

It hurts. But Victor thinks he can let it go now. 

And Yuri will be strong enough to face whatever comes next.

Victor wants to tell him that he can bear this, that he won't have to carry the weight alone. That sometimes the line between excited and terrified is small and fuzzy, and it's alright not to know which side you're standing on. 

That he will learn to wear the target on his back, because this is what he's bought with his blood, and his soul, and the whole value of his childhood. 

That next year will be different, but the ice will be constant.

Yuri Plisetsky is the best in the world. 

And Victor is smiling as the suspended moment fades, and everything moves again.

**...**

Yuri is reminded how heavy gold can be. 

It feels like when he was young, just starting, and the medals around his neck were like targets. 

And Victor could justifiably be angry, Yuri wouldn't blame him. There's no shame in silver, even for a living legend -- but it means he won't end his career on a perfect high.

Victor just smiles, and it's enigmatic, and annoying; the sort of smile that says, ' _ you'll understand later. I can't explain it right now. _ ' 

It isn't mysterious, because Victor hasn't been a mystery to Yuri since he was twelve, and he learned how to read him. Even if he hasn't always been able to predict what he was going to do. 

Something has changed in Victor, and Yuri doesn't really understand, but he hopes it's for the best.

"Do my exhibition with me tomorrow." He demands, standing in the door of Victor's hotel room. Yuri doesn't look over his shoulder at the other Yuuri, because friends or not? He isn't going to let one man's jealousy change his mind. 

He wants this. Wants to end this as equals. And if that means sacrificing his exhibition? It's a small price to pay.

Yuri isn't sure why this is so important to him, but the idea has stuck in his mind, barbed and sharp, and refuses to be dislodged.

"Skate with me. You might be retiring, old man, but --"

_ I want to share the ice with you. No scores, no medals, no competition. _

_ Just us. _

_ I want the whole world to see how perfect we can be together.  _

He wants to touch Victor's cheek, and to memorize the surprised brightness in his eyes. He wants to trace the short edges of his silver-grey hair, the same way Christophe had, years before; when Yuri was still too young and hiding between the seats in an arena a world away from here.

Victor doesn't seem like a god these days. Familiarity has broken the pedestal, and worn away the shine. They're both happier this way, and there's a freedom in being loved by someone who knows your flaws.

Yuri is going to be taller, maybe, but for now they can look each other in the eye, and it feels significant.

Dimly he's aware of Yuuri's voice in the background, reminding them that they can't change their own choreography in a night. That there's no time. 

That Victor should be allowed to have his final exhibition with the spotlight on him. And him alone.

But Yuri isn't asking him to give that up.

He can see the moment Victor understands what he's offering. That he's willing to share his spotlight, and asking for nothing in return. 

And the smile that settles on his mouth is all real, all Victor. No plastic, no artifice; just the soft quirk of his lips that's been tying Yuri's chest in knots since he was barely old enough to know what that meant.

An exhibition isn't like a competition. It's art, and the usual rules don't apply. It's special.

Yuri doesn't wait for him to reply, he just grabs Victor by the wrist and drags him from the room.

Victor calls laughing apologies to Yuuri over his shoulder, because this feels like freedom, and he knows he should feel guilty -- but he doesn't. 

It feels like something old and painful is finally slotting into its proper place, and Victor is seeing the world in overlapping mirrors. He's not sixteen anymore, but the bubbling excitement in his chest hasn't been there for such a long time. 

"I have so many ideas!" Yuri grins when they've rounded the corner.

Victor wants to see them all.

And his stomach churns with something sparking energy and nervousness, because this is an exhibition, yes-- but the world will still be watching. It's been years since he felt this squirming, apprehensive thing in his belly. It won't matter if there are no points, no scoring, if they both make idiots of themselves on the ice.

Victor's never been a pair skater. Even the year before, surprising everyone by taking the ice with Yuuri, hadn't been a new routine. It had been muscle memory, something he'd already known, choreographed and performed. Something Yuuri had memorized from his programs. They'd only had to adjust it a little, tweak a few of the jumps, shuffle a bit of choreography to bring them closer, and it had worked.

Mostly.

"Scared, old man? You can change your mind, and go back to your nice, warm bed, if you don't think you can do it."

Yuri's confidence is contagious, reckless, and Victor feels the knots in his stomach unravel. His smile makes Victor want to laugh, and he happily lets himself be pulled through the heavy rink doors. 

He loves the sharp, familiar smell of the ice, and the way the long rows of seats cast their slanted shadows across the huge, echoing space.

It's liminal. During the day the room thrums with the energy of thousands of cheering people; but this is night, late, and the city on the other side of the large windows is dark. 

There's only this space, and the echo of their steps, heavy with their skates on the rubber padded wooden floor. "Did you have a piece of music in mind?" He asks, and can't help but laugh when Yuri fishes his phone from his pocket with a triumphant smirk.

"What, you think I'm an amateur?"

They can't get into the sound booth, and Victor isn't sure either of them would know what to do with that equipment, even if they could. They're skaters, not sound technicians. So Yuri turns up the volume on his phone as high as it can go, and tucks it into his hoodie pocket. It's makeshift, but they can both hear it, which makes it good enough.

Whatever Victor had expected (and he hadn't had time to give it much thought), it wasn't the familiar melody that spilled into the space between them. "You hate this! Didn't you tell Mila that you'd rather be cut into little pieces and brined before you skated to Disney?"

Yuri shuffled his weight from one blade to the other, hitching his shoulder with an awkward shrug, "I know you like it... And it'd be stupid to use a song you don't know, we don't have a lot of time to do this... I don't want to waste a bunch of our time with you listening to the track over and over and over again. Besides--" Crossing his arms, the jut of his hip daring Victor to make something of it, "It's from the musical thing, not that cartoon movie."

When the song turned back to the beginning again, Yuri reached out, his hand settling on the lean shape of Victor's hip, "I'll skate to this Disney thing, but I'm not being the girl." He didn't wait for a reply, and; his hand splayed on Victor's waist, pulling him closer to his chest.

Yuri's just tall enough that it doesn't feel ridiculous; and Victor's heart is thudding strangely in the base of his throat. It's more like a dance than a figure skating routine, and Yuri's hands never leave him. They're warm, and Victor doesn't think he's ever been so intensely aware of being touched before. 

Around and around the ice they move, tethered together, and Victor's head is swimming.

He's skated with other people before, but it's never felt like this. There's synchronicity, flowing from one step to another; and it's  _ fun _ .

They part, and Victor can feel the cold absence where Yuri's hands had been. It's only a few seconds, just long enough to make his hands burn when they come together again.

Yuri isn't a prince, he isn't elegant and refined. He's a knight, and Victor can feel the shift and tension of his muscles under his clothes. He isn't a child anymore, he's seventeen, teetering on the edge of adulthood, and Victor knows he shouldn't be thinking about him like this.

Victor is the adult, he should know better. His fiance is waiting back at their room, and Victor knows he's going to spend all night on the ice with another man. Then his eyes catch on the laughing curve of Yuri's mouth, and Victor knows he's not going anywhere.

There's nowhere else in the world he wants to be.

And Yuri's never accepted failure, his desire is painted across his face in bold, beautiful lines. 

He wants. And one day he's going to claim what's always been his. 

There's no hesitation when Yuri catches him securely around the waist, stronger than he looks, his fingers like a brand on Victor's hip where his sweater has ridden up. Skin on skin. 

It's makeshift music, and sweatpants, and Yuri's hair falling into his eyes where it escaped the elastic at the nape of his neck. Neither of them knows how to share the ice, but they're learning-- because this is more honest than their words know how to be.

They spin, dizzy in the half light, and Victor feels the tension in Yuri's arms for half a second before he lifts.

Victor's skates leave the ice.

And for an instant, he's weightless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really curious if any of you have any ideas what song they've chosen for their exhibition? I'd love to hear your thoughts! If anyone is interested, I'll put the song I was thinking of in the author's notes for the next chapter!


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes it feels like Yuuri isn't truly with him at all. He's in some fantasy, some fabricated fairytale of what they are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! We got some great guesses on the song for the last chapter, but as promised:
> 
> The song I was picturing was 'In a Crowd of Thousands', from the Anastasia musical. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7B1cT0oQFY)
> 
> "With the sun in my eyes  
> You were gone  
> But I knew  
> Even then  
> In a crowd of thousands  
> I'd find you again."
> 
> We also have cover art now! : https://tinyurl.com/y6jq48k5

**[ twenty-three . ]**

Victor is twenty-nine, and sometimes he aches to be touched.

Yuuri's hands are soft. They're reverent, ghosting across Victor's body and raising goosebumps in their wake. He's patient in bed, all stamina and giving, and his face buried against Victor's shoulder like he can't bear to look at him.

Sometimes it feels like Yuuri isn't truly with him at all. He's in some fantasy, some fabricated fairytale of what they are.

Thinking about the pictures on the walls of his childhood bedroom, maybe. Victor's image trapped young, and beautiful, and airbrushed for popular consumption. 

Or maybe he's thinking about someone else; someone whose touch he welcomes as a man, and not as a supplicant.

Yuuri is a devotee of the cult of personality that's propelled Victor's career, and he's had a lifetime to imagine what a relationship between them would be like. It's sweet and exciting, and Victor is more perfect in his imagination than he could ever be in real life.

He pushes, and Victor yields beneath him, hands skittering across Yuuri's shoulders. 

And he's careful, always so careful. He's slick fingers and slow rolling hips, and in Yuuri's imagination they fit together perfectly.

It eclipses the real.

But Victor can't read his mind, so he's left on the outside. 

Yuuri is quiet in bed, and loud in the apartment. He's restless in St. Petersburg, unhappy with the cold and the snow, and the strangeness of the language. Russian isn't like English, and it's not like Japanese, and he hates the way it feels heavy and clumsy on the back of his tongue, thick with sounds he'll never learn to pronounce, because he doesn't want to.

He thinks it sounds harsh, angry. 

Victor's heard that before, but he loves the sound of his language. He can hear the passion and music in it, even if Yuuri can't.

They're rattling out of their skins, both rubbing against each other until they're raw. It's miserable, and the apartment feels like a battleground. 

Their bedroom is a demilitarized zone, because they both have to sleep sometimes.

Yuuri is angry at the world, and frustrated at the man who shares it with him. He kicks doors open, and slams cupboards, and Victor finds himself more afraid of the future than the present. 

They've become intolerable, and the ring of his finger feels like a cage.

Victor isn't what Yuuri wanted. Not really. But he's won his prize now.

He has Victor in his bed at night, soft and warm, his face pressed into the pillow. And Yuuri isn't about to give that up. 

So he holds tighter, and Victor's skin feels like it's going to come off.

It's going to peel away, and Yuuri is going to see all the ugly things that hide underneath. He's not beautiful. He's not that young anymore, not long haired and sylphlike, and he's not perfect.

He wants to be. Tries to be. Lets Yuuri win their arguments, because this might be his only chance for happiness. And every relationship has rough patches, it'll get better. 

It has to get better, because they can't go on living like this.

Relationships take work, so he's willing to put in the time, and the effort. He compromises and smiles, and stays home at night because it makes Yuuri happy. 

Victor's falling short, failing to live up to the expectations, and he's terrified.

But Victor doesn't want to be a centrefold in his own apartment. He's human, imperfect, and Yuuri doesn't want the version of Victor that forgets to do the laundry, or thinks that pickles make up a whole food group of their own.

Whose mother sends him jars for his birthday, the same as she's done since he was ten. Because no matter how old he gets, they always taste like home.

Yuuri doesn't like pickles. Or Russian food. 

He doesn't understand why people would want to eat dill with everything, or corn syrup on bread instead of real sweets. The tea is wrong, and the coffee is wrong, and everything in Russia is just that little bit worse.

Nothing in Russia tastes like home for Yuuri.

Victor doesn't know how to explain that Russia is a second world country with too much pride. That to be working class here is very different from Japan. Yuuri's never worried about conversion rates, or too-big skates stuffed with newspaper. His parents didn't mend holes in worn-out sweaters because they had to last through the wear and tear of another child.

He certainly doesn't understand why Victor and Yuri never finished school. How the Federation pays them more to skate, than to be educated. How Yuri's been supporting his family since he was a child. 

Why people look at Georgi with a different respect, because he managed the impossible-- and he has the undergraduate degree from St. Petersburg State University framed on his wall to prove it. He spent years running between the university and the rink, working until the middle of the night and jotting down notes during practice. 

Victor remembers those days, and those late nights. He remembers Georgi calling him at midnight, afraid that he was going to fail. And what did that say about him?

Yuuri has fallback plans, and a university degree, and one day he's going to inherit Yu-topia from his parents. And part of Victor doesn't want to explain Russia, or his life,, because he doesn't want to see the pity in his fiance's eyes. 

Russia isn't perfect, but Victor refuses to feel ashamed of it. 

Yuuri doesn't see Russia, not really. Or if he does, he doesn't understand what he's seeing. 

For Yuuri, Russia is the tricolour in white, blue and red. The same colours on Victor's Olympic jacket, and the flag outside the rink. It's the colour of the competition, and not much else.

But when Victor was a little boy, it was red and yellow, with a hammer and sickle that defined the way the world saw his country.

And the people who lived there.

People in the West have some strange ideas about what it means to be from Eastern Europe.

Yuuri doesn't like him talking to Christophe. Which aggravates Victor, because they've been friends for years; and Victor doesn't have enough of those that he can go about throwing them away. So he texts when Yuuri is asleep, and asks how Chris' day has been. 

Victor doesn't tell him he misses him, but he has the feeling Chris already knows.

He doesn't like Yuri lingering after practice to ask Victor questions. Victor is his coach.  _ His coach _ .  _ His fiance _ . And Yuri is the competition, even if he comes over to watch movies sometimes, or helps Yuri translate street signs and magazines, and the things the other skaters say.

Things are intolerable when they close their apartment door, and Victor doesn't know how to reinvent himself into the man that Yuuri wants. He can't be glossy and two dimensional.

He's almost thirty, so he can't be sixteen anymore.. 

Sometimes he wishes he could be. He remembers the lightness, the body that didn't hurt so much. The exhilaration of climbing through the ranks, and being surrounded by the skaters he'd looked up to as a child. 

He remembers the slow slide of his long hair through his fingers. 

Victor remembers being  _ beautiful _ , instead of handsome.

But he isn't a child anymore, and he can't turn the clock backwards. 

Autumn has come early to St. Petersburg, and Victor is sitting by the balcony window, looking out at the thick, grey clouds rushing in from the water. He's become a ghost in his own home, haunting the hallways and the tangled sheets of their bedroom.

It isn't sustainable, but he still wants to make it work. He wants Yuuri to look at him like he did when they met--

Of course, that wasn't what he thought it was, either. He isn't sure Yuuri ever really saw him. 

Not the living legend, not the skating god. Just Victor. Imperfect, but trying. 

The man who had asked both Yuri's what they wanted from him. What pound of flesh did they want for their prize if they won in Hasetsu? Victor isn't sure how many little pieces the world has taken, and sometimes he doesn't feel like there's a whole person left anymore. 

And maybe he's already lost the pieces of himself that Yuuri could love.

So he texts Georgi, because he's three hours ahead, and asks how he's doing in Kazakhstan. They talk for nearly an hour while Victor waits for Yuuri to wake up. And it's not anything special, it's Georgi telling him about Almaty, and the cat he's adopted. About Otabek, and their students, and the fact that he misses Russia more than he knew it was possible to miss a place.

They'll be moving back in the spring, he says, and Victor counts that as the good news for the day.

He asks about Yuri, and Yakov, and Mila. About Makkachin, who's getting more and more grey.

He asks about Yuuri, because there are social conventions, even though he and Victor have known each other for more than half their lives. 

Victor's feeling a bit more like himself when they hang up. 

"Makkachin, come on. We're going for a walk." He says over his shoulder, patting his thigh like he's done every morning for years. 

This morning, there's only quiet from the dog bed in the corner. 

"Makka?" 

Victor knows what he's going to find before he kneels down, because this was inevitable. It's been coming for years. But his chest is tight, and he doesn't want to believe it. "Makkachin... Come on, sweet girl, we're going for a walk." He tries again, sinking down to a knee beside her bed.

She doesn't move when he pets his hands over her still-soft fur, or when he wraps his arms around her. 

Makka doesn't wake up, and her absence feels like a void in the apartment. 

All good things come to an end.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Russia has always been temporary. Yuuri can't imagine why anyone would choose to live here, if they had any other choice. 
> 
> And thankfully, they do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An extra bonus chapter this week, and we're coming up to the end, just a few more chapters to go! I'm mostly done writing them, just polishing and tweaking now, so this will probably be finished this week!

**[ twenty-four . ]**

Yuuri is twenty-five, and he's ready to go home.

He's tired of the strange country, and the cold. Tired of the people at the rink watching him like they're waiting for him to fall. To fail. 

Tired of the other Yuri falling asleep on his couch twice a week, and the way Victor doesn't tell him to stop. 

Yuri isn't a child anymore, he's an imposition. 

He's ready to retire, and it won't be here. This -- Russia-- has always been temporary. Yuuri can't imagine why anyone would choose to live here, if they had any other choice. And thankfully, they do.

He knows Victor will agree, because they're meant to be together, even if they haven't been married yet.

They will be, it's just a matter of time. They've both simply been too busy, too much time at the rink, too much training. But that's changing now. 

Victor wears his ring, and sleeps beside him at night. It isn't enough, not for Yuuri, but as soon as they get back to Japan? He'll be able to fix that. 

They'll make a new home together, and it's going to be perfect.

No more distractions. No more training. No more Georgi calling to make sure Victor is alright. Or Yuri taking up space in their living room. Or Christophe.. Yakov... Mila... All of them claiming fragments of Victor's time, as if they had any right.

And Victor, he humours them too much. Lingers over their conversations, because he won't tell them to leave him alone. 

Everything will be better when they move home, and they can put all of this behind them.

Victor came to Japan for him, and Yuuri has no doubt that he'll follow him again. Every relationship needs compromise, and Yuuri's been here for such a long time. 

He's compromised enough.

And it doesn't matter that Yuuri never managed to steal the gold from Yuri, because he's won Victor. Yuri can keep his medals, Yuuri has something worth much more:

The Living Legend is going to be his husband, to take his name. 

_ Victor Katsuki,  _ it has a nice ring to it. 

It's time, long passed time. And with a renewed lightness of heart, Yuuri calls the airline to book their tickets. They'll be so much happier soon, and he's excited, can't wait. 

Yuuri has loved Victor since childhood, and this is the reward for his devotion. 

After all, hasn't he put up with living in Russia for over a year? He deserves this for his patience.

"Hello, I'd like to book two tickets from St. Petersburg to Tokyo for next week..."

That should give them just enough time to pack everything, and say their goodbyes.

It's going to be such a happy surprise.

**...**

"How could you fucking do this?! Again! Were you even going to tell me?"

Yuri's voice breaks over the last syllables, and Victor doesn't think he's ever been this confused before.

He knows what Yuri sounds like when he's angry, and it's not like this. It's not these crackling consonants, so sharp across his tongue they could draw blood. 

"What are you talking about?" He asks after a long beat, carefully folding a pair of trousers along the seams so they don't get creased in his suitcase. "You expect me to go back to Hasetsu without pants?" Victor lilts his voice teasingly, a forced levity; but instead of rising to the bait, Yuri crosses his arms and looks like he's going to cry.

"You're leaving!" He spits out, hands balled into fists at his sides.

And Victor knows better than to step forward, because Yuri isn't a little boy anymore, and he knows how to throw a punch. Victor is fairly sure he has Otabek to thank for that.

" _ Da? _ In a few days. I was going to tell you--" 

"How fucking dare-!" Yuri's fingers clench into fists, white knuckled, like he's trying to hold himself back. 

He's shaking. 

"It's only for a week! You can live without me that long."

Victor wants to laugh, but Yuri's hands snap out and seize him by the front of his shirt, his laugh dying on his lips.

This close, he can see the tears at the corners of his eyes, and it makes no sense at all. 

Victor is retired. He has a little time, and a lot of money saved; why shouldn't he take a vacation? He's never had the chance before, not really. He's seen the whole world through competition lenses, everything coloured by the media, and the music, and the current standings.

He's looking forward to a few days in Hasetsu, with nothing to do but relax in the springs.

He doesn't think there's anything wrong with that. Victor thinks he's earned a few days laziness.

"A week? He said you were moving back-- you fucking bastard, if you're lying to me--!"

"Moving? Where?" And if Victor was confused before, now he's completely lost. It feels like he should have the answers for this, like he's missing something important. But it's just beyond the edge of his vision, a nebulous dread he's been ignoring for too long.

And it's hurting Yuri.

Yuri doesn't protest when Victor's arms curl around his shoulders gingerly. Testing. Seeing if he's going to be pushed away.

"To fucking  _ Japan _ , you idiot!" Yuri draws up tense, a live wire in Victor's arms; all stored energy threatening to spark and wheel out of their control. 

Yuri's never hurt Victor before. Not intentionally. But he could.

Because of course Victor was moving. 

Running. 

Leaving all the people that cared about him. Leaving  _ Yuri _ . He should have known this was going to happen! Should have known this wouldn't last, and he couldn't trust him! He'd run away to Hasetsu before, and Victor was still wearing Yuuri's ring, and it was all falling apart.

Yuri shudders violently, and his chest feels like it's collapsing around his heart.

"I'm not moving anywhere, Yura. I promise. Where did you get an idea like that?"

Yuri fists his hands in Victor's shirt, and drags him roughly closer; close enough that he can bury his face in the side of his neck. Victor smells of cologne, the same cologne that always lingers on his clothes and in his sheets, and Yuri is drowning in juniper and black pepper, and something floral and soft that's almost feminine, but not quite.

He feels the way Victor's arms slowly, slowly, relax around him. And they're so close to the same height now that it would be so easy.

Easiest thing in the world.

To kiss him.

To close the tense, parallel lines of their bodies.

He doesn't.

Victor is still engaged, and apparently they're not on the same page. And Yuri's heart feels locked behind his ribs. 

"You know where."

They stand there in the middle of the bedroom for a long time, swaying faintly to the sounds of the city they've both learned to love, and the cadence of their own hearts. 

"It's probably a misunderstanding. I promise, I'm coming home."

The bed is still covered in half packed clothes, and Victor's forgotten his promises before. But Yuri wants to believe him this time.

**...**

Yuri isn't sure if it's rage, or something else, but his chest is vibrating under his ribs, and everything feels sharp and compromised. 

He's standing in the locker room, looking down at Yuuri; and it feels strange, because they were the same height once, and now he can see the top of his head and the way his glasses slide low on his nose. 

For a moment, Yuri feels about fourteen again, standing in the toilets in a Moscow change room. 

He doesn't like the feeling, so he grits his teeth and pushes it away.

"So you thought you could just leave with him?! He's not your pet!" His voice pitches up an octave, and there was the anger he'd been searching for, half hidden under the complicated razor-wire hurt. "Sneaking out like some kind of fat little thief, running all the way back to Japan!"

They've attracted an audience, and both of them see Mila hurrying off to get... Victor? Yakov? Both? 

Before they kill each other.

"I know you're angry, Yurio-"

"Angry?! I'm so far beyond angry! I want to throw you into the port and watch you get carried out to sea! I don't care if you're engaged, you can't just decide this for both of you!" Yuri paused half a beat, blood pounding in his temples, "And don't fucking call me Yurio!"

There's an underlining click of Yuri's plastic skate guards when he stomps forward a step, looming over the other Yuuri. He's red faced, and he can feel the adrenaline burn in his veins; because this is intolerable, and he doesn't care who's watching. 

He wants to hit him. To keep hitting him until he starts to fight back, instead of looking up at him with that soft, pitying expression that Yuri hates. 

"We're engaged, of course we're moving together. We'll come back and visit, I promise."

"He's staying. He  _ wants  _ to stay! How stupid are you? This is his home!"

"But it's not mine."

"It could be! You just didn't care. And you didn't try!"

Yuuri's sigh echoes in the change room, more resigned than sad, and he shakes his head like Yuri is still a child. "We're going, Yurio. You don't have to like it, but this is part of growing up. He's my fiance, and--" There was a pause, Yuuri's finger finding the bridge of his glasses so he could slide them back into place. 

"I know how you feel about him. But it's never going to happen, and you have to accept that. We're happy together, Yurio. Can't you be happy for him?"

Yuri's chest locked between heartbeats, and he could feel the colour draining out of his face. Pooling low and sick in the pit of his stomach. "You don't know anything. Not about me, and not about Victor! Don't you get it? He was always mine! I just let you borrow him for a while.”

The words left his mouth with a punch of scalded rage, just in time for Victor to appear around the corner. Mila was dragging him by his sleeve, but her fingers loosened as they reached the front of the crowd. 

"You don't think that sounds hypocritical?" Yuuri snaps, his spine straightening as Victor stands there in confusion, watching the two of them. "You're still a kid, you'll grow out of this. But you can't go claiming people like property."

And that was rich, he thinks bitterly, coming from the man who'd treated Victor like a prize from a coin machine.

Yuri bolted forward, one hand drawn back, and he could see the surprise on Yuuri's face for half an instant before his fist collided with his cheek. 

Silence fell, thick and heavy.

And Yuri barely stopped to grab his skate bag as he pushed through the dense crowd in the doorway. Passed Victor, who seemed pained and confused at what he was seeing.

"Forget all of that. You didn't hear anything."

He could feel the eyes on the back of his neck as he stormed out of the room. 

It was another long minute before Victor sank to a knee, fishing Yuuri's glasses from the damp, tile floor. "We need to talk."

The words didn't hurt, and Victor felt numb, separate from the moment and watching it from the outside. He helps Yuuri to his feet, and he knows the crowd is watching, but he's only faintly aware of their presence. They're background noise, a problem for another time.

"This is why we have to go. This is insane." Yuuri mutters under his breath, and Victor slowly turns to look at him. "He  _ hit _ me." He sounds like he can't quite believe it, like nobody's ever struck him before.

Victor thinks that maybe nobody has. 

His cheek is already swelling, reddening, and it's going to leave a bruise. 

Victor isn't looking for an apology, or an explanation-- he doesn't know what he wants. But they can't go on like this. 

And he doesn't want to.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victor is twenty-nine, and the world he's spent a lifetime building has come to an end. Tomorrow he will have to start over, to discover who this new Victor is, in this strange new existence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I woke up this morning to the most incredible comments and support from all of you, and it was all the encouragement I needed to get this chapter finished the way I wanted it!
> 
> Thank you all so much, you're all absolutely wonderful! ❤️

**[ twenty-five . ]**

Victor is twenty-nine, and there's an empty space on his finger where his engagement ring has been.

Their good luck charm that has always been something else.

He can feel the weight of his keys in his pocket, like a millstone. Heavy enough to drag him down to the bottom, and keep him there. They're made of nickel and brass, but they feel like lead weights, and Victor isn't sure how long he can carry them.

It's a fanciful thought, a little hysteric, and his hands shake when he tries to fish them out of his jacket.

Everything feels so heavy, even the air is pressing down on his shoulders, and Victor's not sure he's ever been so tired. It weighs on him, turning his steps sluggish, and his fingers clumsy when he slides the keys into the lock.

He is no longer the great Victor Nikiforov. Living legend.

He's retired. A name resigned to the annals of sports history. The once-great, and now... 

Finished.

In the morning, everyone will know that his engagement is over. That Yuuri is moving back to Japan, and Victor is staying in Russia-- right now, it feels like he should always have stayed. What good had running off to Japan done, really?

Or maybe he should be staying here? Trying to make something from the remains of his relationship? Is that what he's supposed to be doing?

Yuuri's words echo in his ears, his anger still raw and palpable on the inside of Victor's mind. 

_ You're abandoning me. You think you'll find someone better? You won't!  _

_ We can still be happy. You just have to stop listening to everyone trying to break us apart!  _

_ Get rid of them, and we'll be fine. _

The keys are cold in his fingers, and his jacket is unbuttoned, but Victor doesn't really notice either of those things. Tomorrow he'll have to start looking for a new apartment. He'll have to arrange to move all his things. He'll have to... to...

Unless he goes back upstairs. And for a moment, he lingers over the keys, the tumblers in the door half locked. 

"Victor?  _ Victor _ ." Yuri's voice sounds so distant, lost somewhere on the other side of Victor's shock, and the snow that's falling around St Petersburg. 

Everything he's built has come to ruin in the space of one evening. 

Maybe he'll cry later, Victor isn't sure. Right now it feels like someone's scooped out his chest, and all the little clockwork bits have fallen out. He's been a toy for so long, and they've turned his key and made him dance:

Even the best toys break.

Winter in Russia has come again, and the air is as cold and bitter-sharp as it was when he was a child. It's been years since he ventured back to Siberia, and now? He wishes he could sit in his mother's kitchen again, his hands held to the stove to chase the cold from his fingers.

"Vitya."

And that gets his attention, the syllables catching like fishhooks in his brain. They score bloody new tracks inside his skull, and pull him back to reality. 

Yuri is seventeen, but his hands are rough from years of exposure to the cold. 

He's too young for Victor to lean on, he's always been too young. Too volatile. Too willing to fight the world, even when he knew he was going to lose. 

And his hand is warm, wrapped around Victor's wrist like a lifeline. He's sure Yuri can feel his pulse through his skin, the thudding cadence proving that Victor is still alive in there. 

So he holds tighter, and Victor's wrist bones feel small and fragile under his fingers. 

Yuri hadn't asked what was wrong when he'd called that night, he'd simply come. It didn't matter that it was nearly midnight, or that he had to be on the ice in the morning. Later in the morning. 

His footsteps had sounded like approaching thunder through the apartment door, another tether to the real world. His free hand clutched the bag of Victor's clothes, haphazard and spilling through the half-closed zipper. 

Was he running away again? It didn't feel like it.

"We're going to Lilia's."

"Lilia's? Why?" 

Victor blinked slowly, and Yuri could see the tears, freezing like snowflakes, and clotting his charcoal grey eyelashes. He looks like he's aged a century in the last few hours, the porcelain shattered and revealing something stronger Victor hadn't known was there.

"Because she's family. And you don't want to sleep on my couch."

It is, Victor remembers, a very uncomfortable couch. Not the sort of thing anyone wanted to sleep on. Even Yuri, who seems to be able to sleep anywhere these days.

Victor is twenty-nine, and the world he's spent a lifetime building has come to an end. Tomorrow he will have to start over, to discover who this new Victor is, in this strange new existence. 

Tomorrow he'll be another man in the streets of St. Petersburg. The records he's left will only last as long as it takes Yuri to break them. 

And he will. Probably sooner than either of them realize.

Victor has always known that it was the ice that made him special-- without it, what is he? Who is he? 

He's spinning, untethered-- everything is falling and he's afraid of being crushed by the debris of his former life. He doesn't know how to rebuild from here, or even where to start. 

Yuri is holding his wrist so tightly, like he's afraid Victor will evaporate. Or go running back to Yuuri. He's pulling him down the street, eyes searching the dark, snowy night for a cab to flag down. 

He's not going to get Victor go. And he's not going to let him face this alone. But Yuri's never been in his shoes before, not like this. He's never been engaged, never loved and lost like this. So he's dragging Victor across St. Petersburg to someone who has.

Lilia knows what it is to step down from grace.

She knows how love can fail, and how to look brave when everything inside you has broken.

She will tell him to be strong. That he deserves to be happy. That retirement is not the end of the world-- though it feels like it at the time. 

She'll mix extra raspberry jam into his tea, and press the steaming mug to his hands. Sweetness to counter the tears. 

And she'll tell him that he isn't impossible to love: that Yuuri Katsuki does not rule the world, and his opinion isn't absolute. 

That he isn't alone, and he's allowed to lean on them. He's family, and he has always been.

Over the next few weeks, there will be many cups of tea at the old wooden table where Victor used to do his homework, and planned programs for the life he's now stepped away from. 

From the cab window, Victor watches the lights of his apartment building seep into the blowing snow and the darkness. 

Tomorrow, everything will be different.

But for tonight, Yuri is still holding his hand. 

And Victor isn't leaving for him, he's leaving for himself. Because here has to be something better, something happier-- something more to the world than this. 

Victor wants to find it, even if he doesn't know where to start. 

Maybe that's alright, maybe it's a problem for the morning, whe he doesn't feel like he's shambling through the world, disjointed and his strings cut.

He's not leaving for Yuri. But he still finds his hand in the dark.

Yuri makes it easier to be brave.

**...**

Victor's apartment is full of boxes that aren't his own.

His things take up half the closet, and a few cupboards in the kitchen. Half the counter space in the bathroom, and most of the shelves in the living room bookcases. It all feels like an ending, picked out in these hollow spaces, like cavities in his home; and Victor doesn't know how to mourn for Yuuri leaving.

He's going back to Hasetsu, and Victor is staying in Russia, because this is the only place that's ever really felt like home. It's in his blood, and the heart soaring cadence of the national anthem sounding tinny and echoing over stadium speakers. It's in the white nights, and the snow.

Yuuri is leaving, and there are blank spaces on both their fingers. They're like after-images, faint outlines like the scars this is going to leave behind. 

It feels absolute, not just because they're moving apart, but because they're putting thousands of miles between them. And that only makes sense, because this isn't Yuuri's home, it never was. He misses Japan, and his family, and Victor would never ask him to stay here.

So he's leaving, and the world is changing, and Victor thinks it will be a long time before he dates anyone else. 

It hurts. It all hurts.

Even if it's for the best, and they both know it is.

His phone is filled with well-wishes from people that love him. And still love him, even though he's retired and there will be no more gold medals in his future. In a lot of ways, that's the strangest thing of all:

They love him. Not his fame, or his money. And they don't care that he's retired, or that he isn't a teenager anymore.

They love him. Flawed, and imperfect Victor.

They love him. And for the first time, Victor lets himself believe it.

Georgi's offers to come home, because he can catch a direct flight from Almaty if he leaves on Wednesday, and he promises that Otabek will understand. They're family, he reminds Victor over and over, until the words seem to stick, and Victor cries over the phone in the middle of the night. 

He tells him everything.

Mila drags him out for coffee after her practices, and they talk about nothing in particular. Just the rink, and the weather, and how she's going to decorate her new apartment. It feels wonderful and normal, and they linger over their mugs for longer than they should.

Lilia invites him for dinner, and sends him home with containers of leftovers, because Victor is almost thirty and still can't cook. 

There's a place on the bench beside Yakov, and they talk about the rink. And about the Russian team for the next Olympics. They talk about choreography, and music, and how to refine their skater's programs for the rest of the season. 

He's getting old, and Victor can't imagine a new generation of skaters not being trained by Yakov.

But it's happening. And Yakov wants to know if he's planning to stay.

He is.

It takes time, but Victor is finding his way back to the people he loves. 

"I'm going to miss you." Yuuri says, placing the last of his little odds and ends into a box, a figurine wrapped in layers of old newspaper to keep it safe. "I know this hasn't always been easy, but I do care about you. I just got caught up in the fantasy and... I'm sorry."

They've dismantled their shared life. They've cried-- together, and apart. 

There are absences in the apartment where Yuuri's things have been packed away, and there's nothing to fill the gaps. The spaces feel like windows to the world, and for the first time in... Too long. Victor can breathe.

"So am I... I didn't let you in, that was my fault."

They don't need to keep score anymore. 

When Yuuri looks at him now, Victor feels like he's seeing him for the first time. It's too little, and too late, but it feels like closure. Like they've reached the end, and are shutting the book on the shared chapter of their lives. 

Later today, they'll bring Yuuri's boxes to the post to be shipped. 

Tomorrow, he'll drive him to the airport. 

And when the flight lands in Japan, Yuuri will post to social media that he's arrived safely, and Victor will hear about it with the rest of the world. 

The apartment already feels too big, and he isn't sure he's going to stay here. But that's a problem for next week, and right now, Victor just wants to get through tomorrow. Because this hurts, and Victor thinks, it's supposed to.

And that's alright. He's strong enough to live with it.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're circling each other, and everything is changing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's hard to believe that this is the second-to-last chapter! I'm hoping (crossing my fingers) to be completely finished by this Friday, or Saturday at the latest! ❤️

**[ twenty-six . ]**

Yuri is eighteen, and holds two world records, and a growing handful of gold medals in a box in his closet.

He has the best fans in the world (which he's decided, and that's the only opinion he cares about), and they don't call him the Russian Fairy anymore. 

He's Yuri Plisetsky, and his name is starting to eclipse Victor's when people talk about figure skating. They'll always love him, but public memory has a short half life.

They don't remember coaches, they remember the people on the ice. They remember the costumes, and the music, and career-ending disasters.

Victor is thirty, and starting to discover who he is without those things.

He has a new apartment in a better part of the city. It's comfortably close to the rink, but just far enough away that he can breathe. Victor still keeps to his competition diet, because some things are habit. But occasionally he stops at the cafe halfway between his apartment and the rink, and orders his coffee with sugar and milk. 

He's never really learned to like it black, and neither has Georgi. 

They talk about being forgotten by the public, but remembered by their students. About choreography, and costumes. And the books that Georgi loves, and Victor finally has time to read. 

Victor skates because it makes him happy-- not because he has something to prove. 

He and Yuri watch terrible movies together, and fall asleep on Victor's couch, because neither of them wants to end their time together. So they linger, and wait, until it's too late for Yuri to leave, and it makes more sense than he stays.

No use wandering around St. Petersburg in the middle of the night, he'll probably get stuck behind the raised bridges that criss-cross the city. Better he stays. It's only common sense.

In the morning they pretend it was all an accident Or they make excuses-- the movie was longer than they expected, the weather was getting bad, it was cold, or snowing, and Victor would never make him walk home in that. 

They're circling each other, and everything is changing. 

**...**

Victor hasn't been home for years, but the train still smells of stale coffee and old smoke, just like it did when he was a child.

Yuri is sitting across from him, flicking through a cellophane packet of fruit sweets and dividing them on the edge of the saucer under his coffee cup. He only likes the lemon and lime, which works out fine, because Victor only likes the cherry and the grape. They leave the green apple alone, because everyone knows those are the worst.

Mostly he's just trying to keep his hands busy. He's never been this far to the north before, and he's never met Victor's parents. He can't imagine what they're like, or why they were willing to let him join them for New Years.

Maybe they were just grateful for anything that brought Victor home for a week. It's possible. 

Neither of them is quite sure what to expect, but Victor is doing a better job of hiding his nerves today. 

Yuri doesn't understand parents very well. Or siblings. It's outside of his experience, and he still can't wrap his mind around the fact that Victor is a middle child. That he has nieces and nephews that he's never met.

Because his family is still in Siberia, and Victor's been living in St. Petersburg since he was ten.

Just like Yuri. 

And now they're going to meet all of them, and Yuri's stomach has been tied in knots for days.

"Yura..." Victor's voice is quiet in the car, barely audible over the rattle and clank of the train moving over the tracks. He reaches across and takes his hand, squeezing tightly. "They're going to love you."

He hopes he's right. He's been hoping since he booked the tickets.

Yuri isn't sure which of them he's trying to comfort. But he squeezes back, tiny grains of sugar melting between their fingers. 

They've never talked about the things Yuri said to Yuuri in the change room that day.

" _He was always mine! I just let you borrow him for a while.”_

But they both know this is important. It's more than their joined hands, or the distance, or the holiday.

This is Victor saying that Yuri is important. A permanent, indelible part of his life. 

Important enough to meet his family. To see the world he came from. 

And it's Yuri wanting to see.

They're not dating. But their hands are joined until the train arrives.

**[ twenty-seven . ]**

The cold in Siberia isn't like the cold in St. Petersburg. It's dry and crackles on their skin when they venture out of the house, and the snow is light and feathery, like all the moisture has been drawn out of it.

It feels like the winter foreigners imagine when they picture Russia, with endlessly dark nights and a sun that hovers just at the edge of the horizon during the day, but never rises over it. 

Yuri's always lived in the city, first in Moscow and then St. Petersburg, and visited a dozen other capitals and metropoli for events. There have always been people, and lights,and civilization-- but this remote corner of Siberia feels isolated. It feels like they've traveled by train, by plane, and by terrifying drive over the ice bridge that connected it to the mainland, to reach the end of the world.

Their hotel room faces north, and from the window, Yuri can see the endless snow, stretching on until it meets the milky blue of the morning sky.

"It looks like you could walk forever." He muses aloud, sitting by the window with a cup of coffee warming his hands. It isn't very good, the usual cheap hotel drip blend. But it's hot, and there's a little piece of him that draws comfort from the warm weight of the mug.

He thinks it's the same part of the human brain that equates safety with fire. With life, and survival, no matter how terrible the weather.

Besides, the cold seeps through the glass, and Yuri is grateful that the hotel hasn't skimped on the heating. Or the extra blankets in the closet by the door.

"You could walk to the sea in a few days. If you didn't freeze first."

Yuri looks up from the window, and pulls a face that's mostly teasing, "And what am I supposed to do at the sea, old man?"

Victor's laugh is muffled for a moment as he pulls his sweater over his head, his pale hair crackling with static, "Get eaten by a sea monster?"

Nobody else gets to see him like this, just Yuri. He's rumpled and soft, and his cheek is still flushed pink and covered in marks from his pillow. Fine strands of silver hair stick to his forehead with a static cling, and Yuri wants to comb his fingers through them.

And when Victor pads over to the window, he steals Yuri's coffee cup, and smiles before stealing a sip.

"No thanks. I'd rather feed you to the sea monster. At least then you'd stop stealing my coffee!"

When Yuri looks back out the window, he can see the busy village below, everyone bundled in scarves and parkas, and braving the cold. But he and Victor are two hours behind, still on St. Petersburg time, and both of them are enjoying the slow start.

It's an average hotel, but comfortable enough when all they need is to sleep here. They would have stayed with Victor's family, but Kostya is there with his wife and their two children. And Irina with her husband, and their daughter, Angelina, who follows Yuri around the house like his new shadow.

Much to Victor's amusement.

The two youngest, Lyosha and Tatiana, are arriving that afternoon. Yuri can see Victor's nerves in the way he plucks at his sleeves and runs his fingers through his hair-- only to backtrack and have to fix it again. 

He hasn't seen them since they were all children.

His siblings know him from the television, his face in lights. And Victor will never admit that it hurts, because that would be accepting that he could have, should have, come home sooner.

Yuri doesn't comment. It seems cruel. And besides, what does he know about it? He's never had siblings, not that he knows about-- though he supposes it's possible that his mother has had more. He wouldn't know, they haven't spoken in a decade.

He and Victor have shared a room before, but not like this. Not planned, with two narrow beds, and both of them eyeing the chasm between. They could push them together, and Victor could fall asleep to the sound of Yuri's heart under his cheek, instead of the low hum of the central heating.

But they aren't quite there yet, no matter how tempting it is.

It's like an elephant in the room, or maybe a polar bear. But they don't spend much time at the hotel, so mostly they can push it out of their minds. A problem for another time, that neither of them is going to solve.

They dress, and head downstairs. And the rest of the world might not know that Victor Nikiforov is from this isolated little corner of the world, but they know him. They smile when he passes, their own local boy finally home. 

The home where Victor grew up is warm, and the linoleum in the kitchen is scuffed from a thousand footsteps. The floral wallpaper peels at the edges, especially around the fireplace where the glue has slowly given up, curling around the edges of the picture frames his mother hung years ago.

The walls are like a gallery of this family, and Yuri always finds himself lingering over the images of young Victor. A few days ago, he couldn't have imagined that Victor was ever small enough to sit on his brother's shoulders-- but now he's seen it himself, trapped behind glass, and it's unexpectedly adorable.

There's Victor on his too-big skates, and walking hand-in-hand with Kostya and Irina. There are baby photos where his hair is so light it's almost white, and rosy-cheeked children playing in the snow.

Victor's been gone for most of his life, but the photos remain. A reminder that he still has a place here, something indelible that time and distance can't change.

"I was starting to think that Vitya had forgotten his way home." Victor's mother, Vera, serves tea with a generous spoonful of strawberry jam. And it's something Yuri generally hates, he avoids it like the plague when he can. 

But it's not so bad here, and he can sip it while he watches Victor in the living room.

He can't promise Vera that Victor will come home more often, it's a long way from St. Petersburg; and it's not their hometown, but they've made their lives there. 

Maybe he can convince him to call. Sometimes. Once in a while. More than he has before.

Victor is sitting cross legged on the floor while his niece holds his hands. Mara's barely old enough to walk, and she wobbles on her tiny skates, the bottoms blunted with bright pink guards. She doesn't know about medals and competitions; she wants to skate because it looks like fun, and this new stranger, this Uncle Vitya she's never met before, promised not to let her fall.

"She's going to be better than you, old man." Yuri teases from his spot at the table, his smile half hidden when he brings his steaming mug to his mouth.

His own new shadow is fast asleep in her grandparent's bed, after spending most of the morning hanging off Yuri's side.

It's domestic, and usually it would make Yuri tense; uncomfortable in his skin, and in this environment. But Victor's family is... nice. They don't treat him like an unwanted addition-- but he's still a guest so he doesn't have to peel potatoes and carrots like Victor does.

He might be over thirty, but he's still her son. And apparently that means he's going to help, just like everyone else.

The kitchen is warm, and it's Vera's domain. Victor's mother oversees the whole house from there. All her children, and grandchildren, and she reminds Yuri of his own grandmother in a way he hasn't thought about in years. 

It prickles behind his chest, this missing, longing, watching Victor's family with a tinge of envy. 

"Are you going to be better than me, Marochka? And better than Yuri?" Victor smiles at his niece, and she grins back, gummy and bright. "I think so, too! You hear that, Yuri? She's going to break all your world records and bring them home to me!"

Mara doesn't understand a word of it. But Victor always snuggles her to his chest when she wobbles, and she loves that.

That afternoon they all bundle themselves in mismatched layers, and venture out to the pond where Victor first learned to skate. It's cold, but not unbearable, and it turns out to be more fun than any of the adults expected. 

There are no scores here, and the ice is uneven and rough. It's a world away from the great arenas he and Victor have skated in.

But the children are holding onto their hands, and laughing, and Yuri remembers leaving the rink in Moscow with his grandpa. It's strange to be the adult, but part of him likes it. 

That night, Yuri calls his grandpa to tell him how much he misses him. 

And when he and Victor fall asleep in the same bed? Neither of them analyzes it too closely. It's warm, and comfortable, and they never bother to sleep back-to-back anymore, because it's silly. 

They never wake up that way, anyway.

"Goodnight... Vitya." He tests the name on his tongue, and feels Victor smile against his shoulder.

Yuri thinks he would come back here again. Sometime. He wouldn't mind.

**...**

Some places feel like home, even when you've been away for a lifetime.

Even when his childhood neighbourhood seemed smaller, because Victor knew what it's like to walk beneath glittering skyscrapers, and the towering ceilings of stadiums built to fit thousands. Where the rows and rows of seats could fit the population of his village several times over.

It's been years since Victor was the scared little boy leaving Siberia for the vast unknowns of the city, and now he's come home. 

His family has changed. Grown. His siblings aren't the children he remembers-- but neither is Victor. His older siblings know him as the brother that left; and the younger two know him from photos on the walls, and images on the television. 

They know he's their brother, but he's also a stranger to them. Known, and unknown.

He's come to Siberia half expecting, half fearing, the worst. And he'd been met at the door by Kostya nearly sweeping him off his feet, and his mother's arms gathering him in like he'd never been away. 

It's surreal, and overwhelming, and wonderful all at once.

Which is how Victor finds himself on the front stairs of his mother's house on their last night in Siberia, staring up at the stars he can't see from St. Petersburg because it's too bright. 

He wonders about home. About when he can find a way to come back. He won't wait another twenty years, that's a mistake he won't repeat.

He wonders if he could convince his parents to visit him in St. Petersburg. Or his siblings. He wants them to see his world, too. 

"Vityusha? You're going to catch cold standing out here."

Victor looks up as his mother settles a wool blanket around his shoulders, the familiar roughness smelling like wood smoke and home. Vaguely he can hear the sound of his family inside, Yuri's voice standing out bright and happy against the quiet of the night for a laughing instant.

It's a sound that chases away the winter, and Victor isn't sure when he's ever heard Yuri laugh as much as he has in the last week. 

They've both been missing pieces, and this is the last place Victor ever thought they would find them. But he's grateful for it.

"So, this is the man you're bringing home. It took you long enough."

"Mama?" Victor blinked, his fingers curling into the heavy drape of the blanket to keep it anchored around his shoulders. It is cold-- colder than he'd noticed, and his hands tingle with the pins and needles of returning circulation. 

His mother had seemed so much taller when he'd been small himself; a woman that held the whole world, and his family, in her infinitely capable hands. 

Now he can wrap his arm around her, and she doesn't even reach his shoulder.

They've changed, but the need to make her proud? That's endured. He thinks it probably always will. 

He's not a child anymore, calling for her to watch him on the ice, or dancing his fledgling programs through the middle of the kitchen instead of helping with dinner. He's outgrown those things, but the desire is still there.

He wants her to love him.

And he's never brought a boy home before. Oh, his mother knows he's gay-- she's known for a long time. She doesn't use the internet, but she reads all the magazines with his face on the cover. 

They've never talked about it, but he was engaged to a man, so it can't be a surprise.

It's what Victor's been telling himself for weeks. 

Months.

Every time he thought about calling home, and changed his mind, because he was afraid.

"Yuri's a friend..." He begins, but the words feel like lies on his tongue, and after half a broken syllable, Victor lapses quiet. 

"He's a good man, and he wants to take care of my beautiful son." The rest of their family is inside, but this is just the two of them and the snowy night. 

She brushes his grey hair from his eyes, touches his cheek like he was still small, and the world blurs as tears fill his eyes.

Victor never brought Yuuri to meet his family. He couldn't imagine him here.

But through the window, he can see Yuri sitting cross legged on the living room floor, trying to hold some kind of conversation with his father, and Kostya, while the nieces and nephews use him as a climbing frame. 

And Victor's never forgotten the little boy hiding in the back stairwell at the arena, fighting for the chance to get home to his own family before it was too late. 

His mother smiles, a little sadly, and dries his tears with the trailing edge of his blanket.

"Did you think we wouldn't approve? Vityusha... I'm your mother, I see how you look at him. And how he looks at you."

Instead of looking up at the stars, Victor turns to glance inside, his back to the snowy railing. Lit by firelight, Yuri is laughing at something Kostya has said. He's incandescently lovely, blonde hair falling into his eyes, and...

Happy. He looks happy.

"I love him." Victor paused, his soft sigh freezing in a cloud of white as it left his mouth. Just saying the words aloud felt strange, his chest lightening as the weight shifted. Such small words, but they make the world feel different.

Loving Yuri has always been too easy, but he's never admitted it aloud before. It was too dangerous, for both of them. It's always been too dangerous, but that hasn't stopped the feelings. Victor is happier with Yuri than anywhere else in the world.

And they've seen a lot of the world.

In a minute he'll have to go inside and face everyone with those words still staining his lips, burning with the truth. 

Victor loves him. But he doesn't think it will change anything.

Vera sees her son in the reflected warm light through the window, and wonders what's stopping them. They're so close, stealing longing glances when the other isn't looking; and holding hands when they think nobody else is. They link arms, and lean against one another when they walk.

They're not lying to anyone but themselves.

For now, Vera pulls her son down and brushes the melting snowflakes from his silver-grey hair, so like her own.

"You'll make it work, both of you. And when you tell me this boy is going to be my new son? I'll be nothing but happy."


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And it all started with a memory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are, at the end of all good things. But before we get to that, a little housekeeping! As I'm sure a few of you noticed, I have made a series for this fic, and I'm going to be occasionally adding short stories and scenes all set in the Weight of Snow world. Think of them like deleted scenes, and bits that didn't make the final cut! So if you want notifications about updates, I highly recommend subscribing to the series.
> 
> And, much much more importantly! Thank you so so much to everyone who's taken the time to comment or kudos this fic, this whole process has been such a wonderful ride! You've all been so supportive and incredible, and I can't thank you enough. ❤️

**[ twenty-eight . ]**

Victor is thirty-one, and Yuri is nineteen. 

And it all started with a memory.

Victor has never seen much of Moscow beyond the sprawling Sports Palace, and the small apartment where Georgi's parents used to live. He's seen it from the air a dozen times, the glittering stretch of living light appearing out of the darkness. 

But for Georgi and Yuri, once upon a time this had been home. 

These are the streets they walked with their families, and the buildings that had been familiar landmarks. The places they missed when they left them behind for St. Petersburg.

Neither of them has lived here for a very long time; but Moscow is old and slow to change, and Victor can feel Yuri's fingers tighten around his wrist as they approach the Red Square. 

The whole thing had started as a laugh, a bit of nostalgia over dinner. With Yuri and Georgi mentioning that they'd skated here as children, and how clearly they remembered the excitement, and the glow of the lights on the ice. 

So Chris had suggested they see it for themselves. 

For one brief time, they'd all been skaters here. They'd all shared the nervous tension on the night before Rostelecom. The eras of their professional careers overlapping at the edges.

Now, only half of them will be on the ice in the morning, and the other half will watch from the boards. Watching over their own students, and cheering. It's not Victor's first major competition since his retirement, but they're in Russia; and he can't explain it, but something about that makes it feel important. 

Different.

Victor, Georgi and Christophe exchange glances as they walk towards the public rink, trailing behind the others. They feel like relics of a bygone age, and it's the first time all three of them will stand at the boards, knowing they won't take the ice. Not tomorrow, and not ever again. Not like they used to. 

Things are changing. Have changed. 

But for a few hours on a snowy Moscow night, they're all together.

For a few hours, the world is lit with gold light, and coloured the scent of ice, and hot chocolate wafting from the stalls outside the rink. 

It doesn't matter who's professional, and who's retired, because they're all here together. And the ice doesn't care how famous they are, or were. The rink in the Red Square is for everyone; from the teenagers practicing jumps and spins at the far end-- showing off for one another, their cheeks red from the cold-- to the toddlers holding their parents' hands, unsteady on their tiny skates.

Victor tries to imagine Yuri here, small and eager, excited to show off. And it's not as difficult as he thought it would be.

"I've never been here without Grandpa." Yuri's voice is pitched quiet, only half audible over the scattered human noise from the thinning crowd, "Feels weird." But he takes Victor's arm like it's the most natural thing in the world-- and lately, it almost is.

"We should see him before we go back to St. Petersburg."

Both of them, together. 

They all have the same terrible rental skates, the edges worn down and dull from years of amateur abuse. It's such a difference from their own, Riedels and Jacksons, honed to a perfectly sharp edge. 

But those are back at the hotel, and the terrible skates are part of the fun.. So they laugh as Christophe and Minami venture out onto the ice first, wobbling faintly on the blunt blades until they find their new balance. 

Minami reaches out for his coach to catch him, and Victor can hear the amusement in Yuuri's laughing voice when he does. They've been public for six months, still flushed with the excitement of new love. 

Victor and Yuuri don't talk. But when they meet each other's eyes across the rink, they smile, and it feels like progress.

"He looks happy." Yuri points out quietly under his breath, and for a moment, Victor wonders when they started reading each other's minds. But Yuuri does look happy, wearing that uncomplicated smile that had vanished long before he and Victor had parted.

It's all the confirmation that either of them needs that it was all for the best.

Victor doesn't see the way he leans into Yuri's side when their lazy laps curve around the corners, their bodies loose and comfortable on the ice. He barely notices the weight of his hand on the small of his back, or the sidelong glances from Christophe and the others.

He's too busy watching Otabek pulling Georgi to the centre of the rink, white knuckled and mouth flat. Even from here, Victor can see the nervous way his lips pinch at the corners, anxious and trying not to show it.

Victor has known Georgi for twenty years, and he's never seen him as happy, or as stunned, as he does when Otabek sinks down to a knee in the middle of Moscow, and asks him to marry him.

"He's been carrying that ring for months," But Yuri's smiling, delighted but not surprised when Georgi scrubs away his tears on his glove, and accepts. "I thought he was never going to get the courage to do it." 

It will probably never be legal in their lifetimes; not here, and not in Kazakhstan; but Victor doesn't think Georgi cares. They don't need a piece of paper to build a life together, they're doing that already. 

Georgi wakes up every morning beside someone he loves, and his still wears his heart on his sleeve-- tears rolling down his cheeks as his now-fiance slides the ring onto his finger. 

Otabek is stable, and steady; he's the rock that Georgi needs. Come the end of the world, that man will still be at his side. 

Victor can't find it in his heart to be envious, not when his best friend is so perfectly happy.

Otabek looks at Georgi like he's the lucky one. Like the whole world revolves around the man in his arms.

Victor and Yuri don't see how transparent they are, they're too close to have clarity. But everyone else can see how they lean into one another, finding excuses to touch. They're made of brushing, fleeting, fingers-on-sleeves touches; of straightening collars, and fixing wayward hair, and they smile when they think the other isn't looking.

Yuuri can see, but he's known for a while; and he isn't going to breathe a word, because they need to figure this out on their own. 

Christophe can see, and he's not as surprised as he thought he would be. Victor doesn't laugh out into the void anymore, and he doesn't need Chris the way he used to-- which is right, as it should be, because Chris is married, and happy, and his world is a better place when his friends are happy, too.

And it's been such a long time for Victor. 

Everyone can see the way Victor ducks his head to smother a laugh against Yuri's shoulder. The way Yuri leans against Victor's back when they pause to watch the proposal, smiling over his shoulder. 

Their fans speculate, and debate, and post pictures of the two of them together. There are whole message board threads wondering and comparing, and occasionally arguing about whether they're romantic, or platonic-- and whether the age difference makes it strange. 

Or strangely wonderful.

They're incandescent, in love, and terrified to break the fragile, spun-glass bubble they've created. 

**[ twenty-nine . ]**

They share their lives, all the margins overlapping and the spaces between them blurring.

A year passes, and Victor tells him about Robbie. 

Questions have always been difficult, dangerous; skirting the edge of what he wants people to know. 

And what he wants to keep secret, because he's been in the public eye since he was a teenager, and they've been watching him. Collecting information and publishing it in newspapers, speculating in their online forums, and silence is the only privacy Victor knows anymore.

His heart is tight in his chest, but he trusts Yuri more than anyone in the world.

They've migrated into Victor's room, because it's the warmest part of the apartment, and the power has gone out. So they've wrapped themselves in every blanket he owns, both huddled under the covers to wait out the cold night.

At least they're together.

There's nothing to do but talk, both of them staring at each other in the darkness. And there's nobody else to see them; just each other, and the stillness, and the rise and fall of their breathing. Even the city feels quiet beyond the apartment windows, because the grid is down, and people are staying home.

_ "When did you first know you were gay?" _

Yuri knows the answer to that, and he remembers the hard drop in his belly when he finally said the words aloud. And he remembers watching Victor in the change room, distracted by the pale lines of his body, his own vibrating with nerves.

Victor doesn't remember, because it's been a lifetime, something he's always known.

_ "Who was your first kiss?" _

Yuri sees the way his smile dies in the darkness.

And Victor takes too long to say, "Another skater. He retired after my first year in Seniors."

Victor isn't sure how they've gotten onto this topic, one thing leading into another. An organic stream of consciousness coiled between them. They're curious about each other-- they've been curious for a decade, trapped in the other's orbit, and never asking their questions. 

Because Yuri was too young, and there are things you shouldn't wonder. 

Things Victor has shoved to the back of his mind, because he knows he's flawed.

Because he doesn't want to be that person.

Doesn't want to hurt Yuri like Robbie hurt him. And he doesn't want to leave him with bruises and emotional scars, pressure points under his skin and in his skull, that Yuri will have to carry for the rest of his life.

He's loved Yuri in this slowly metamorphosing way, and it's been impossible to ignore that he's grown into a beautiful man, all his promise bound in fair skin and flashing blue-green eyes. 

It's been impossible for a long time-- too long. 

And Victor might be damned, but Yuri is the one sliding closer, until his head rests on the same pillow, and they're murmuring their answers into the warm space between them. 

"Who was your first?" Yuri asks, his voice pitched low and breathless. He isn't sure he wants to know, but he asks anyway. Yuri knows he can be jealous, but his imagination is vivid enough to hang him, so he'd rather have the truth.

Victor's stomach twists, his heart is thumping in his ears. 

The words lock in his throat, and it's hard to believe that Yuri is older now than he was then. He's never told anyone about this, because the words are steeped in shame. He's spent years wondering what he could have done differently, why he wasn't stronger.

He's never wanted to be a statistic, but he's never been able to forget. 

In the dark, Victor closes his eyes, feeling Yuri's breath on his face. And tells him everything.

Once the words start, it's like they have a mind of their own, spilling across his lips and tasting like salt and copper. They hurt, barbed edged syllables catching against the rawness in his throat-- and he should have known better, because the signs were all there, but he didn't want to see them. 

He wanted to be loved.

And Robbie's lies had promised everything he so desperately wanted.

"You shouldn't say stupid things like that." Yuri countered, arms crossed over his chest and fingers digging bruises into his own biceps, because if he lets go? He's going to reach out to Victor (and he isn't sure that would be such a bad thing) or he's going to find Robbie Miralles and beat the life out of him.

"Just because he was a bastard doesn't mean that you are. You know how I feel about you, Victor-- I'm not a kid, and you're not him."

In the dark, Victor can make out the shadows and outlines of Yuri's face, fixed and determined, like he's trying to gather up his courage.

Not much scares Yuri.

The bed creaks under him when he moves. A part of Victor wants to tell him that this is too much of a risk, that he's going to regret this in the morning. And if not tonight, then next week, next month. 

Victor is broken, and Yuri is young and beautiful, and he could have anyone. 

But they've been inseparable for more than a year, and hasn't it always been coming to this eventually?

Yuri kisses him once.

Twice.

"I love you, Vitya. You're not going to hurt me."

And Victor's arms find home around his shoulders, their bodies searching out each other beneath the tangled mound of blankets. He can taste Yuri on his lips, and their hands are shaking.

It's rushed, because they've been denying this for years, and wanting it for even longer. They have a momentum of their own, and it's impossible to stop once they've started..

They're breathing in the same air, and there are too many clothes, so many layers they have to strip away. And none of this was planned, it's not wise; but it's the only thing in the world that makes sense. 

It's hands pushing aside blankets and sweaters, and finding desire-flushed skin. 

It's the way Victor gasps under him, throat flushed and bare as he tilts his head back.

And when Yuri rolls his hips, both of them shudder. 

Yuri kisses like he's drowning, all teeth and grasping hands, holding onto Victor like he's going to evaporate if he lets go. 

They fit, and hold each other together as the walls they've built collapse between them.

**[ thirty . ]**

Victor is thirty-two, and Yuri is twenty

He's an adult, capable of making his own decisions. And he's chosen Victor, and the apartment they share.

They've become old news, and that's the way they like it. They hold hands against the boards, and Yuri steals kisses for luck, even when the cameras are watching. 

The media follows Yuri's skating, his soaring career. He's the best in the world now, nobody can touch him. 

And people don't compare him to Victor anymore.

They argue, and they laugh, and Yuri makes him feel younger than he has in years. 

Neither of them can cook, both of them rushing and busy, and trying to fit something resembling a meal into their day. Only Victor is a true menace in the kitchen-- he could burn water if he set his mind to it. But Yuri isn't far behind, and they have to replace a few pots and pans before they accept that this is a part of domesticity they're just not made for.

They both plan to learn to cook when they have more time. But time is in short supply, and most of their days are spent at the rink. 

Yuri is still made of sharp angles and blazing temper, but his hands are secure on Victor’s waist as he leads them across the ice after hours. When it's just the two of them, and the slide of the blades, and Victor's terrible taste in sappy music. 

It's grown on Yuri, just a bit. 

They'll never be pairs skaters, but they're beautiful on the ice. It's not practiced or choreographed; it's the two of them laughing, and the way Yuri spins them both until they're dizzy. 

It feels clandestine, stolen late evening moments, even though Yakov has retired and Victor has the keys. Their own private time together, sharing this thing they've loved all their lives.

Yuri hasn't told Victor about watching him and Christophe from the stands, but he will. Soon. He thinks Victor will find it funny.

And he's never mentioned the coil of Victor's hair still tucked into his skate bag. But he doesn't intend to, ever. Some things are better left secret.

They have someone to come home to, and that's a strange feeling for them both. 

They share the bathroom counter, and the small shelf in the shower. They argue over bedding-- because Victor likes things soft and simple, and Yuri thinks it's boring. Their styles mirror them, and with a lot of compromise, they discover a harmony that works for them both.

Sometimes they fall asleep on the couch, watching terrible movies just to laugh at the even worse Russian subtitles. They both speak English fluently, but it's the butchering of their mother tongue that amuses them.

Yuri's cat has decided to accept Victor's presence in their lives. Mostly. 

They've become permanent, without rings or vows.

They've both thought about it, being married.. It's a problem for the future, but they linger over the idea. Yuri searches the internet for rings when Victor is asleep, because he hasn't decided if he's going to ask.

Victor's been engaged before, but it didn't feel like this. There's nothing on his hand, nothing to look at.

And then Yuri threads their fingers together, and everything slides into place. He doesn't need anything else, he's happy. 

It feels like a revelation. The impossible thing he never expected to find, and was right in front of his eyes all along.

They're both happy. 

They orbit each other, as they always have-- only now, their trajectories overlap and collide, with lips and bare skin, and sparks. 

It's not what they thought it would be.

It's better.


End file.
